Untitled PDF

MODULE – 1
Introduction
Commodity v/s Specialty,

Classification of formulated products,
Market Pull vs. Technology Push,
Process Design vs. Product Design,
1
Two Questions
In the past:
How will we make our product?
In the future:
What product will we make?
Answering the second question will

include the answer to the first.
Chemicals Types
Products made by chemical industries
Commodity Products Chemical Products

(e.g. H2SO4, NH3) (Specialty Products)
Specialty chemicals Formulated Products Assembled Products

(e.g. Laboratory (e.g. paints, icecreams, (Artificial Kidney,
reagents) detergents) Blood Oxygenator,
Batteries, Microchips)
50% of the market of CPIs is currently made of specialty products!

Commodity v/s Specialty
Commodity products
 Large quantity
 Continuous production
 Low value addition
 Process Design and optimization are major concerns
 Classical unit ops: distillation, absorption, extraction, etc.
Commodity v/s Specialty
Specialty products
 Small quantity
 Batch production
 High value addition
 Time to market, quality & performance are major concerns
 Exotic unit ops: spray cooling, extrusion, crystallization, etc.
Formulated Products
Typically contain 4 to 50 components and cover a wide range
 Paints
 Cosmetics (e.g. skin creams and lotions)
 Inks
 Pharmaceuticals (e.g. cough syrups, ointments)
 Personal care (e.g. soaps, shampoos, toothpastes)
 Household (e.g. laundry detergents)
 Food (e.g. ice cream, margarine, peanut butter)
Classification of formulated products
(Favre et al., Trans IChemE, vol 80, Part A, pp 65 – 74, 2002)

Historical view of formulations
(Favre et al., Trans IChemE, vol 80, Part A, pp 65 – 74, 2002)

A new set of problems associated with
specialty products
 Batch type operations, in contrast to continuous operations for commodities.

 A typical operations e.g. granulation, compression, extrusion, spray drying,
spray chilling, coating, emulsification and gelation in place of classical unit
operations.
 Mixing of complex media (i.e. non-Newtonian fluids, particulate solids)
 Structure-property relationships, structure/ microstructure determination and
obtaining controlled structures are key challenges.
 Classical ChemE activities like separation, conversion or yield problems are not
major concerns at the production stage.
 No handbook yet to address these problems: No Perry’s Handbook of Product
Engineering.
Product Examples
Vulcanized Rubber (Goodyear, 1839)
• Natural rubber (polyisoprene) obtained from rubber plant.

• Natural rubber is brittle in cold weather and tacky in hot weather; it is
odorous and perishable.
• American inventor Charles Goodyear spent 5 years doing trial-and-error
experiments looking for a suitable additive.
• He discovered vulcanization (heating with sulphur) gives a suitable rubber.
• He patented his discovery but his patents were infringed.
• He was imprisoned for debt in 1855 and died disappointed in 1860.
• After his death John B Dunlop founded the tyre industry by patenting and
developing pneumatic tyres for bicycles.
Celluloid (Hyatt, 1870)
• Ivory taken from tusks was once used for billiard balls and piano keys.
• In 1845, Parkes invented pyroxylin from cellulose dinitrate and proposed it as an
alternative to ivory; but, the material was inflammable.
• The American John Hyatt heated a mixture of nitrocellulose, camphor and alcohol to
form a tough material Celluloid.
• Celluloid has high tensile strength, is resistant to water, oil and dilute acid, and can
be made cheaply.
• Celluloid is used to make spectacle frames, piano keys, and photographic films.
• In 1888, George Eastman began mass production of celluloid roll films for still
photography.
• This paved the way for the invention of motion pictures (Edison)
Ether (Morton, 1846)
• The pain of childbirth and surgery was once considered a curse of God.
• In the ancient past, cannabis, opium, rum, etc tried as anesthetics.
• Nitrous oxide (laughing gas) was found to be an anesthetic in 1799; first
surgical use in 1842.
• The first surgical use of diethyl ether was in 1846.
• Queen Victoria gave royal sanction to anesthetics by using chloroform for
birth of her eighth child in 1853.
• The true mechanism of anesthesia is still elusive.
Aspirin (Hoffman, 1898)
• Aspirin is one of the most important drugs to lower fever and relieve pain.
• In 1875, Carl Buss administered salicylic acid to typhoid patients successfully.
• But salicylic acid is strongly acidic and leads to vomiting.
• In 1883, von Nencki reacted phenol with salicylic acid to produce salol.
• Salol passes unconverted through the stomach and hydrolyzes back to
phenol and salicylic acid in the small intestine; phenol in the intestine leads
to unpleasantness.
• Felix Hoffman chanced upon acetylsalicylic acid; it passes unchanged in
mouth and stomach and is converted to salicylic acid and acetic acid in the
intestine.
• Bayer patented the manufacturing process and called it “aspirin”.
Tetraethyl Lead (Midgley, 1921)
• The challenge in automobile engine research is to get highest thermal efficiency per gallon of
fuel.
• Under heavy loading, severe knocking occurs leading to loss of efficiency and even destruction
of engine.
• By trial-and-error, Midgley found that ethyl iodide works well in reducing the knocking.
• For the next three years, Midgley studied every branch of chemistry to explain this fact. He
also tried several alternatives: aniline, selenium oxychloride, diethyl telluride and hundreds of
others.
• Then, in 1921, he resorted to the periodic table and focused on heavy metals from the lower
right-hand side, especially lead.
• This lead to the discovery of TEL as the best antiknock agent.
• TEL gave the world access to higher efficiency and more safe engines.
• TEL forms lead aerosol which is poisonous to breathe; use of TEL was abolished in the 1970s.
Sulfa drugs (Domagk, 1930)
• Gerhard Domagk joined I G Farben in 1927 and worked on the action of dyes against
various infections.
• In 1932 he tested the azo dye protonsil and found it cured mice with streptococcus.
• In 1935, he saved his daugher’s life from a severe infection using this dye.
• Further research showed that this red dye cleaved in the body to form colorless 4-
aminobenzene sulfonamide, which is the active principle.
• This led to synthesis of more than 1000 sulfa compounds as derivatives.
• These sulfa drugs have wonderful antibacterial properties.
• Awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1939.
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloro-ethane (Muller, 1939)
• Paul Hermann Muller worked for J R Geigy Corporation that was looking for a perfect
insecticide.
• Natural pesticides (pyrethrum from chrysanthemum and nicotine from tobacco) were
expensive, not persistent and easily destroyed by heat and light.
• Lead arsenate, another insecticide, is dangerous to humans.
• Muller decided to work on chlorinated hydrocarbons and by 1939 had screened 349
compounds for effectiveness on houseflies.
• The 350th compound was DDT. In 1940 Geigy patented use of DDT as insecticide and
ushered in the era of synthetic chemical pesticide.
• Malaria eradicated worldwide using DDT. In 1948, Muller received the Nobel Prize for
Medicine.
• In 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring. DDT was banned by US EPA in 1971.
Penicillin (Fleming, 1928)
• Alexander Fleming was a bacteriologist at London University. Worked in 1928 with staphyloccocus
bacterial culture in Petri dishes.
• Found that one such culture died by accidental contamination of the fungus Penicillium notatum.
• He located the active substance and called it Penicillin; Penicillin works by inhibiting the bacterial
enzymes responsible for cell wall synthesis.
• Fleming was unable to obtain sufficient Penicillin to test its therapeutic properties
• The work lay dormant for 12 years till WW II when Florey and Chain at Oxford University demonstrated
the therapeutic effectiveness on mice.
• A consortium of pharmaceutical companies (Merck, Pfizer, Abbott etc.) was formed to develop 1 kg of
penicillin in 1941 for clinical trials.
• Penicillin was mass produced by a fermentation process and concentrated by a solvent extraction
process developed by Shell Oil.
• Penicillin proved to be the most effective medicine against throat infections, pneumonia, meningitis,
diptheria, syphilis and gonorrhea.
• Fleming, Florey and Chain received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945.
Nylon (Carothers, 1930)
• In the 1920s natural fibres like wool and silk and semi-synthetic fibres like
Rayon were known.
• In the 1920s, the nature of polymers were still being debated.
• Wallace Hume Carothers accepted that polymers were long chain molecules
and set about proving it.
• He founded the field of “condensation polymerization” and invented nylon –
the first fully synthetic fibre - using this technique in 1930.
• It took 10 long years before nylon was available for sale as stockings.
• The R&D cost then was $4.3 million.
Teflon (Plunkett, 1938)
• Roy J Plunkett was at DuPont looking for an effective refrigerant to replace Freon.
• Plunkett synthesized tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) and stored it in pressure cylinders.
• In April 1938, when one cylinder was opened, nothing came out but the cylinder weight
remained unchanged!
• Plunkett sawed open the TFE cylinders and found a smooth waxy white coating.
• PTFE is thermoplastic, melts at very high temperature and is highly insoluble even in
conc. H2SO4 and conc. HNO3.
• PTFE patented in 1941 and given the trademark Teflon in 1944.
• Bonding of Teflon to metallic surfaces accomplished by French engineer Marc Gregoire.
• Patent granted in 1954 to use Teflon as nonstick material in cooking pans.
• Ronald Reagan was named the “Teflon president”.

Post-It (Silver and Fry, 1964)
• 3M is an adhesive company that produced the Scotch tape and the

magnetic tape for sound recording and memory storage.
• They were always on the lookout for stronger and stronger adhesives.
• Spencer Silver in 1964 discovered a weak glue that was dismissed as a
failure.
• 10 years after this discovery, another researcher at 3M, Arthur Fry, found
that this adhesive could be put on pieces of paper which could be easily
peeled off.
• This led to Post-It.
Gani, Comp. Chem. Engg., 28 (2004), p. 2441 – 2457.
A Typical FMCG Company
Villadsen, Chem. Eng. Sci., 52(17), 2857 – 2864 (1997).

Changes in the Chemical Industries
Commodity manufacturers are facing a crisis:

 Optimization and restructuring (downsizing) are not working.
 Ruthless minimization of research and concentration on in-house efficiency
 Many firms are leaving the chemical business
 Some are turning to specialty products.

Changes in the Chemical Industries
Changes in Corporate Culture
Corporations organize product development in two ways:
 Organization by function
 Organization by project
• Both can be effective
• Functional organization is like a chemical reaction in series.
• Project organization is like a chemical reaction in parallel.

Changes in Corporate Culture
Corporate Strategy: “Market pull” vs. “Technology
push”
• “Necessity is the mother of invention”
• Market pull: There is a market looking for a technology, e.g., Freon.
• There is a technology looking for a market, e.g., Botox. Technology

push:
• A “platform technology” is a technology successful in one or more

markets and has potential applications in many more markets.
Market Pull vs. Technology Push
The Product Design Procedure
Product design depends on four steps:

 Needs. What needs should the product fulfill?
 Ideas. What different products could satisfy these needs?
 Selection. Which ideas are the most promising?
 Manufacture. How can we make the product in commercial
quantities?
• Application of this template leads to new features of the design
process.
• The entire course is organized around this procedure.
Criticisms of this procedure
• Not general (yes, the steps will usually have to be iteratively

sequenced).
• Management, not technology, is the key (no, can management

circumvent the second law of thermodynamics?).
• Product design is a part of process design (no, we must go

beyond process design, as shown next).
Process Design vs. Product Design
• Product design emphasizes decisions made before those of process design.
• In process design we know what the product is; not so in product design.
• Commodity chemical manufacture best served by process design (no

product differentiation).
• Specialty product development best served by product design (product is

differentiated).
• Focus of process design is efficient manufacture (recycle, heat integration,

optimization, etc.) ; focus of product design is speed to reach the market
place.
Process Design vs. Product Design
Process Design Product Design

1. Batch vs. Continuous 1. Identify Customer Needs
Process
2. Generate Ideas to Meet
2. Inputs and Outputs Needs
3. Reactors and Recycles 3. Select among Ideas
4. Separations and Heat 4. Manufacture Product

Integration
MODULE - 2
Needs of Chemical
Product
Needs and Specifications

Alternatives to interviews
Needs – Examples
1
Needs
• Chemical product design begins by identifying the customer

needs.
• Who are these customers and how can their needs be

identified?
• When our product is primarily used by consumers their needs

will be described in nonscientific terms.
Needs and Specifications
• Needs are often vague, qualitative and desires for solutions to ill-
defined problems.
• These needs must be translated into product specifications.
• These specifications will require continuing revision and re-

evaluation.
• This revision greatly facilitated by using “benchmarks” which are

often competing products that we hope to replace.
Customer Needs
• Elucidating customer needs involves three sequential steps:
 Interviewing customers
 Interpreting their expressed needs
 Translating these needs into product specifications
• In each step, we must be careful not to narrow the product definition

prematurely.
• We must not jump directly into identifying new products or some ways to
improving existing products.
Interviewing Customers
• Our primary source should be the final users of the product.
• These users may not be those who buy the product from us (e.g.
patients in a hospital)
• The users can be organizations, including government agencies.
• These users needs to be contacted and a time arranged to discuss
their needs.
Lead Users
• Lead users depend very much on existing and competing products.

• Lead users will have needs that are well in advance of the market
place.
• They benefit most from any product improvements.
• Lead users are important sources in two ways:
 They often invent minor product improvements on their own.
 They often clearly express what is wrong with existing products.
• When they can be identified, lead users are an invaluable source of
information.
Interviews
• General consensus: face-to-face interviews are the best to discuss needs.

• Fewer than ten may miss important information.
• More than fifty result in little new information.
• Normal target ~ 15.
• Seems silly with only one or two corporate customers – but, persons within a
single corporate can express differing views that can shape the final product
design.
Alternatives to interviews
Two alternatives:
 Focus groups and trained test panels
• Focus groups have a leader and perhaps eight panel members.
• Focus groups may show a synergism leading to suggested innovation.
• Focus groups often show less variance of opinions than individuals.
• Many unconvinced by this strategy.
• Trained test panels are common in evaluating small differences in
consumer goods.
• These panels may guide consumer product improvements.
Before beginning interviews…
• Each member of the core team must write out:

 The project scope
 The product’s target market
 The key business goals
• The project scope should be one, simple sentence.
• The target market should include both primary and secondary customers, and
estimates from sales from each.
• The business goals should include:
 The timing of the new products
 The organization’s technical advantage(s)
• Once done, entire team should reach a consensus.
Standard Interview Format
• Core team should develop a standard interview format to ensure a common

starting point.
• E.g. a list as follows:
 What do you do now?
 How do you use the existing product?
 What features work?
 What does not work?
 How do you buy the product?
• The list should preferably be simple and generic without references to
specific product ideas.
Interviewing Tips
• Interviews depend on interviewers’ skill in eliciting useful responses.

• Core team can often seek assistance from marketing.
• If possible, all core team members should participate in at least one
interview.
• In every interview:
 Encourage tangents
 Stimulate with alternatives
 Remove assumptions
 Be alert for surprises
Interpreting Customer Needs
• The result of interviews will be a potpourri of responses which need to be organized.
• The customers’ needs recorded will be a random collection, filled with redundancy and
irrelevancy.
• We may often have to drop stated needs which are for perpetual motion machines or
beyond company’s expertise.
• Ranking of needs:
 Essential – the new product must meet all essential needs to be successful
 Desirable – new product might meet desirable needs especially if existing
competitive products do not meet these needs.
 Useful – we do not plan to design products explicitly to meet them.
Interpreting Customer Needs
• Ways of organizing and ranking needs differs depending on whether we are inventing a
new product or modifying an existing product.
• In seeking an improved product we are familiar with the existing product.
• We can easily define the essential, desirable and useful product attributes.
• We can reach a consensus within core team on these needs.
• This may need additional review with customers, especially with lead users.
• The importance of the additional review will depend on how major the improvements
are.
• In seeking a new product, needs may be grouped by target market or by common
function.
• In seeking a new product, we almost certainly must return to the customers, perhaps to
a somewhat different set, to specify needs tightly.
Needs - Examples
Better Thermopane Windows
• In hot or cold climates, good insulation needed.

• To do this, windows are made of two or more panes of glass narrowly
separated by a gap.
• If gap is evacuated, vacuum can pull the panes of glass together.

• Hence gap is filled with a gas and glued with a sealant.
• The gas should be an effective insulator with low thermal conductivity.
• Freon used before, but now phased out.
• Argon is industry’s choice.
• Problem is with sealant used to glue the glass panes together.
• Water vapor can diffuse through the sealant and fog the windows; argon
can leak out.
• Need is for a sealant that traps argon and keeps out water vapor.
• First need is essential and second need is desirable.
First step: Talking to people:

 Talk to manufacturers of thermopane windows.
 Talk to building contractors (how is the window installed? Where in the
house is it located?)
 Talking with homeowners may not be needed.
Key questions to be asked:
 What are the requirements of the sealant?
 What sealants have already been tried?
 What is the temperature change that the window encounters?
 What is the window lifetime?
• Over 100 sealants have been tried; silicone rubber gives the best seal.
• But silicone rubber is highly permeable to water.
• A common alternative is polyisobutylene:
 Permeability to water 400 times less than silicone rubber.
 Does not make a good seal: it does not stick to glass seal.
• Most windows encounter daily temperature changes of less than 15 0C;
window manufacturers usually test their products under higher stress.
• Window lifetimes, usually more than twenty years; but homes not owned for
this long.
• Need is thus for a sealant that bonds as well as silicone rubber, and has water
permeability at least small as polyisobutylene.
Fluids for Deicing Airplanes
Deicing Fluids
• In cold weather, snow can collect on planes as wait at the gate for take-off.
• The snow is removed by spraying the planes with deicing fluids, which are
discarded after use.
• Deicing fluids can be toxic to humans and wildlife; major source of pollution.
• Need for alternative deicing fluids that are less abusive as they can be
recycled.
Deicing Fluids
• In this case, we already have a product that works well.
• We seek alternatives that not only work well but cause less pollution.
• The customers are not the airlines but the airports.
• We should interview the employees of the engineering firms which carry out
deicing.
Deicing Fluids – Interview Sample
Deicing Fluids – Needs Identification
• Based on the interviews the perfect product:

 Is sprayable
 Has a low volatility
 Does not smell
 Is not toxic to fish
 Is not toxic to humans, and
 Is easily recycled.
• These needs have to be categorized as shown next.
• Some contradictions in interview (the product is nonvolatile yet smells).
Deicing Fluids – Needs Identification
Formulation Approach for Deicing Fluids
• Probably, one single chemical cannot meet all needs.

• Need for a formulation-based approach.
• Final product will consist of:
 Compounds that are biodegradable and adequately depress the freezing
point (i.e. melt ice).
 Compounds to ensure wetting, i.e., surfactants
 Compounds to prevent corrosion, i.e., anti-corrosion agents.
M. Hill, Comp. Chem. Engg., 33, pp. 947 – 953 (2009).

Smart Labels
• Consider a company that manufactures labels to attach to food in supermarkets.
• Labels on packaged chicken could give weight per kg., the price of the package, and
date of expiry.
• We wish to improve the labels, make them “smarter”.
• For e.g., the “smart” label may change date of expiry if the chicken is frozen.
• Our goal is to identify and organize the customer needs for these new smart labels.
• This a wholly new product, so our standard interview format may not work.
• Instead, we assemble several peers and collect their thoughts.
• Then these thoughts are organized, at least in a preliminary fashion.

Smart Labels – Need Identification
Smart Labels – Need Identification
Smart Labels – Organizing the Needs
• We have an unstructured list of needs.
• Cannot always tell which needs are essential, desirable or useful.
• Best to organize the needs around intellectual topics rather than business
topics.
• Later we can target the product needs consistent with the company’s business
interests.
Smart Labels – Categorizing Needs
Needs and Product
Specifications
Consumer Products
• Often the needs of chemical products are easily evaluated with conventional
scientific instruments.
• But many consumer products have important characteristics difficult to
measure using conventional instruments.
• For e.g., to develop superior cosmetics, we may want to measure the
“smoothness” of the skin.
• For e.g., to develop better sweaters we may want to measure the softness
of the wool.
• In such cases, we have difficulty in developing appropriate specifications.
Consumer Assessments
Three scales used:

 A simple comparison test
 A relative grading test
 A test for assessing ratios
Simple Comparison Test
• The common question is: “Is sample A more _____ than sample B?”
For e.g., “Is cream A smoother than cream B?”
• “Is meat A more tender than meat B?”
• “Is fleece A warmer than fleece B?”
• People are good at making this type of judgment.
• Comparison tests are especially useful for evaluating alternative products that are
similar.
• In such tests, each consumer should be tested for consistency (if A better than B and
B better than C, then A better than C).
• Such comparison tests can identify better product formulations, but they are less
useful in setting specifications for new products.
Relative Grading
• A product can be graded on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 is the low and 10 is the

high); or a product can be graded A, B, C etc.
• Assessments of different consumers are then arithmetically averaged.
Some important features:

 Consumers should be discouraged from using fractional scores such as
3.1 and 8.6 (10 different scores as much as anyone can handle).
 The average score is 5.5, not 5.0; 5.0 is below average.
 Many consumers may not give a score of 1 or 10.
 Still, grading is a very useful type of assessment.
Ratios of Assessment
• This involves judging the ratios of attributes.

nij0
• For e.g., given some cookies, choose one as nij  1/ l
 l 0
standard. Then cookie 1 is twice as sweet as   nij 
 i 1 
standard, cookie 2 is half as sweet as
standard, etc.. 1/ k
 k 
ni   nij 
 i 1 
• Clearly assessments of zero sweetness make
no sense as all assessments are relative.
nij0 is actual assessment of consumer j
on sample i, one of a group of l samples.
• Averaging the assessments is more
k is no. of consumers.
complicated
Consumer Assessments
• Once a method of assessment is chosen, the consumers are presented with a

selection of possible products.
• They are asked for their evaluations in terms of popular vocabulary.
• The vocabulary depends on the specific products.
• For e.g., breakfast cereals are “crunchy”.
• Wool substitutes are “soft”.
• Skin creams aim to make skin “smooth”.
• The consumer responses are then averaged and then we can formulate a
ranking of consumer needs.
Reformulating Consumer Needs
• Consumer needs need to be reformulated as more quantitative

specifications.
• This is normally easier if we can relate specific attributes to particular
scientific parameters.
• This will avoid running back to the consumer every time (Is this crunchy
enough? Is this smooth enough?)
• The connection between consumer attributes and instrumental
measurements is normally sought empirically.
Reformulating Consumer Needs
• For e.g. “thick” soups have viscosity and “thin” soups have low viscosity;
viscosity measurements can be carried out to yield a satisfactory “thickness”.
• Similarly, assessments of “sweetness” correlate with measured sugar

concentrations.
• Judgments of “sourness” are proportional to citric acid concentration.
• Some surprises: “Crunchiness” of a breakfast cereal is not related to the

cereal flakes’ fracture mechanics; it is related to the sound released during
chewing.
• Beer’s “smoothness” is not related to viscosity; it is related to presence of

small bubbles that reduce the coefficient of friction on the tongue and hence
the related contact lubrication force.
Formulating a Product Specification – e.g. Tasty
Chocolate
• A good chocolate has “melt in the mouth” quality.

• Chocolate manufacturers (e.g. Nestle’) employ expert panels to assess
quality of their chocolate.
• Some testers can even identify the country of origin of the cocoa beans.
• Yet, one would like to quantify this “melt in the mouth” attribute of
chocolate.
• That is, we can augment the experts’ assessments using scientific
instruments.
Tasty Chocolate
• Chocolate gets its “melt in the mouth” sensation from the melting of cocoa
butter crystals.
• Cocoa butter can crystallize in five different forms (depending on

crystallization conditions), each with different melting points.
• Form V is the desirable one, with a melting point about 35 0C, just below
mouth temperature.
• Form IV, having a m.p. around 28 0C, results in a powdery layer (blooming).
Tasty Chocolate
Tasty Chocolate
• Chocolate testers spend a lot of effort in identifying the crystal forms of cocoa
butter.
• This can conveniently be done using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).
• A more sophisticated technique is powder X-ray diffraction.
• We can then assess product quality and so optimize manufacturing and

storage procedures.
MODULE - 3
Needs and Product Specifications
Consumer Assessments,
Reformulating Consumer Needs,
Revising Product Specifications,
Examples.
1
“Thickness” of skin creams
• Consumers often prefer “thick” creams to watery creams.
• Intuitively, one might consider “thickness” of the cream to be directly
proportional to its viscosity.
• Actually the correlation is not linear.

“Thickness” of skin creams
Converting Needs to Specifications
• Customer needs discovered during interviews are usually qualitative.
• They may include trivial product changes and unrealistic product dreams.
• These are assembled and edited by marketing teams.
• In this step, the engineering and technical teams only play a critical/
supportive role.
• Next step is to convert the needs into particular product specifications.
• Here marketing is less important and chemistry and engineering are
paramount.
Strategy for Setting Specifications
• We require a cogent strategy for setting product specifications.

• The experienced designer can use the strategy as a checklist.
• The novice uses the strategy as a convenient way to get started.
The strategy is composed of three steps:

 Write complete chemical reactions for any chemical steps involved.
 Make mass and energy balances important in product use.
 Estimate any important rates that occur during product use.
• Very similar to the design principles taught in undergrad curriculum.

Example – Muffler Design
• The muffler (“silencer”) contains exhaust gases, including water vapor.

• When the muffler cools, the water condenses and corrodes the inside of the muffler.
• One way to avoid this problem is to place a bag of hydrophilic zeolites in the muffler.
• This absorbs the water vapor, preventing liquid condensation and dramatically
reducing corrosion.
• When the car is restarted, the hot gases heat the zeolite.
• The heat vaporizes and drives of the water.
• The zeolite is thus ready to adsorb more water.
• Relevant questions: How much water will we need to adsorb? How fast should the
adsorption be?
Example – Muffler Design
Muffler Design – Answering the Questions
Example – Water Purification for the Traveler
• People travelling into wilderness areas require drinking water.
• Water sources such as streams and ponds are contaminated by viruses and
bacteria.
• Possible candidates for interviews: hikers, mountaineers, soldiers, and
equipment suppliers.
Water Purification Device - Needs
• Produces safe water

• Is light and small (portable)
• Is fast acting
• Has a long lifetime
• Requires no power source
• Is cheap and reusable
• Improves odor and flavor
These needs have to be converted to product specifications.
Water Purification Device - Specifications
• This product is not amenable to our afore-mentioned strategy.
• The chemical reactions and mass and energy balances are trivial.
• The rate process: how fast do people lose water?
• The answer: 5L/day (1 gal/day)

Aim: Design for groups of two to four persons, for trips upto 2 months.
• Thus the product should purify ~ 2000 L of water before it fails.
• We may use the water for cooking, so the flow rate should be ~ 1 L min-1.
• The product must be carried up mountains: weight < 1 kg, volume < 1 L.
• US regulations require 99.9% removal of bacteria and protozoa.
• Price – Less than $100.
• Product must be effective at high altitudes: i.e. 0 – 400C and one third of 1 atm
pressure.
Final specifications might take the following form:
 Has a capacity of 2000 L
 Has a production rate of 1 L min-1
 Removes 99.9% of bacteria and protozoa
 Costs less than $100
 Has an operating range of 0 – 40 0C, one third of 1 atm
 Improves odor and flavor

Revising Product Specifications
• The strategy – stoichiometry, overall balances and rates – leads to
preliminary product specifications.
• Two serious shortcomings:
 Our initial specifications may be blatantly unrealistic.
 The strategy does not draw careful comparisons with existing
products.
• Need for revision of the product specifications.

The First Shortcoming
• The specifications may be far off the mark.
• They may suggest materials that are excessively expensive.
• They may require huge flows or huge concentrations.
• They may imply elements not in the periodic table.
• These indicate we must revise the product specifications (or abandon
product development).
• This type of revision often called “sanity check” or a “gut check”.

The Second Shortcoming
• No careful comparison with existing products.
• Need for a “benchmark”.
• We can gauge the significance of improvements by comparison with “benchmark”.
• Such comparison may reveal need to revise specifications.
• If product is totally new, then no possible choice of benchmark.
• Choosing benchmarks is a serious risk: we are jumping straight to the best guess of the
solution, bypassing product development.
• This risk is real: the core team will have to downplay the favorite guesses.
• At the same time, the specifications have to be revised with any extra information that
seems important.
Needs and Product
Specifications
Example – Deicing Winter Roads
• In winter, roads in frosty areas are spread with a mixture of sand

and salt.
• This improves traction and melts ice and snow.
• This treatment works well but salt causes environmental damage:
 Corrodes cars four times faster than water alone
 Weakens bridge decks and parking ramps
 Pollutes local water wells
• Need for alternative chemicals that are less environmentally

abusive.
Deicing Winter Roads
• Using salt as benchmark, we can formulate the following needs:
 The alternative should melt ice over a similar temperature range.
 It should melt a comparable amount of ice per kilogram as salt
does.
 It should cause less corrosion per kilogram than salt.
• Two alternatives: Urea and Calcium magnesium acetate (CMA).

The basic phenomenon involved is Freezing Point Depression.

• To get a drop of 10 K, formula yields 18g NaCl per 100g H2O; 23g for urea and 13g for
CMA.
• Amount of chemical particles available to melt ice: 34 for NaCl, 17 for urea and 20 for
CMA. Salt is better.
• Third specification, corrosion, is hardest to evaluate. Urea does not form ions, hence
noncorrosive; Salt and CMA produce ions.
• Under diffusion control, corrosion rate proportional to

ionic concentration. H fusion
x2  (T0  T )
RT 2
• But ice melting also proportional to ionic concentration. 6kJ / mol
x2  (10 K )
• Hence both corrosion and ice melting are accelerated. 8.314( J / mol  K )(273K ) 2
 0.097
• Final factor: Cost. As shown in table salt is most D
economical. j1   c1
 
• The analysis shows we need to revise our specifications.

• The exact nature of revision depends on additional information.
• High cost of alternatives is a barrier.
• Urea is already a commodity, so costs cannot be cut further.
• CMA costs dominated by raw material (acetic acid) costs.
• Remember: Real objective is to clear the roads.
• Instead of melting the ice, we may be able to debond the ice from the road
surface somehow.
• Then the ice may be removed by a snowplow.
• Such a revised specification makes good sense.
Conclusions
• Product development begins with the identification of customer needs.

• The needs are effectively explored through interviews with 15 – 20 individuals.
• The needs are then collected and rank ordered.
• The needs are then evaluated by the core team (consisting of representatives
from marketing, research, engineering and manufacturing).
• The teams must reach a consensus on how needs are translated to preliminary
product specifications.
• Preliminary product specifications guided by first writing out all chemical
reactions, by estimating mass and energy balances, and by assessing the rates of
key processes.
• At this point, scientists and engineers have the first major input.
Conclusions
• The preliminary specifications will require revision.

• This is facilitated by using a standard “benchmark”, often a competing
product.
• The revised specifications need to be analyzed critically:
 Are the specifications excessively restrictive? (as in the road deicing
example).
 Are they consistent with corporate strategy?
 Are they building on existing corporate strength?
• Once the specifications are complete, we are ready to start seeking ideas
for their achievement.
Example: Scrubbing N2 from Natural Gas
• Natural gas is a major energy source.

• Natural gas is mainly methane, with some
hydrocarbons.
• May contain CO2 and N2, impurities to be removed.
• Cryogenic distillation is prohibitively expensive.
• CO2 removed by absorption into aqueous solutions of
amines using packed towers.
• Similar procedure for N2 absorption???
Scrubbing N2 from Natural Gas
Example: Scrubbing N2 from Natural Gas
• Need: a liquid or liquid solution that absorbs N2 but not methane.
• Currently no such liquid, so no benchmark.
• Can we attempt a product specification for a liquid that absorbs N2 as
amines absorb CO2? Similar loading, similar kinetics, similar equipment.

• Let us look at amine absorption of CO2.
The stoichiometry is:
• If aqueous solution contains 10 wt % amine and reacts completely,
amount of CO2 absorbed will be:
• To meet our specifications, we would like our new liquid to absorb

similar amount of N2.
• Need to anticipate N2 complex formation.

• The complexes are most likely going to be organometallic.
• Possibly hemoglobin-like with a porphyrin structure.
• The compound will likely be large, with MW ~ 500 or more.
• Unlikely to be soluble in water greater than 10 wt. %.
• If this organometallic compound forms a 1:1 complex,
• Like it or not, the N2 scrubbing solution is going to be more dilute.

• Justification for the 10% figure comes from studies of animals’ oxygen
absorbing systems. 10% is actually an optimistic estimate.
• We can go ahead and guess at the height and diameter of the packed
towers required for absorption.
• Standard design calculations reveal that the packed towers will be far
larger than that for CO2 absorption.
• Conclusion: the original specification, that the absorption of N2 closely
imitate that of CO2, will be difficult to achieve.
• Need to revise specifications.

Conclusions
• Product development begins with the identification of customer needs.
• The needs are effectively explored through interviews with 15 – 20 individuals.
• The needs are then collected and rank ordered.
• The needs are then evaluated by the core team (consisting of representatives from
marketing, research, engineering and manufacturing).
• The teams must reach a consensus on how needs are translated to preliminary
product specifications.
• Preliminary product specifications guided by first writing out all chemical reactions, by
estimating mass and energy balances, and by assessing the rates of key processes.
• At this point, scientists and engineers have the first major input.
The First Management Review (The First Gate)
• Core team prepares both a written report and an oral presentation.

• The audience will be senior level managers, often above immediate supervisors of the
core team.
• Usually, outcome will be positive: allowed to continue development!
• After all, the core team has been together for only a few weeks.
• Moreover, impetus may have come from very senior managers who will not want their
ideas abandoned without careful scrutiny.
• In this step, chemists and engineers can be effective in teaching management about
the science behind the specifications.
• It is through specifications that one can decide whether product development should
be continued or stopped.
• Product specifications are the key to the first management gate.
MODULE - 4
IDEAS AND SELECTION
Human sources of ideas,
Chemical sources of ideas,
Sorting the ideas,
Screening the ideas,
1
Princess Kissing the Frog
Overview
• Ideas come from a variety of sources
 Customers
 Competitors
 Consultants
 Members of product development team
 These may be insufficient
• Chemical ideas sparked by other sources:
 Natural products; folk medicines
 Combinatorial chemistry
• Once a large no. of ideas generated, need to window them: two‐step strategy.
 First remove redundancy
 Drop ideas inconsistent with corporate strategy
 Drop ideas that do not build on corporate strengths
 Drop ideas that seem pure folly
 This leaves perhaps 20 ideas
 Second, aggressive screening
 Can use a concept screening matrix
 Cuts the ideas from 20 to 5.
Human Sources of Ideas
• We normally need 20 – 200 ideas to get one winning product.
• Estimates vary with the particular industry:
 Du Pont ~ 300 initial concepts
 3M ~ Only 10 ideas
 Zeneca and Pfizer ~ 100 ideas per success
• Conclusion is clear: we need a lot of ideas.
• Two questions:
 Who are the sources of ideas?
 How do we get these sources to give us ideas?
Sources of Ideas
• The product development team itself:
 The team includes representatives who have made, used and been
frustrated with existing products.
 They will be quick to see merits and demerits of any new concepts.
 Their professional careers depend on success; they have a large stake.
• The product’s potential customers:
 This group directly benefits from the new product’s characteristics.
 Most important: “lead users”. They have already tried to modify the
product for their particular goals.
 A related group: Competitors. Competitors’ marketing efforts may
supply clues to their own plans.
Sources of Ideas
• Literature:
 The trade literature and trade shows provide information about current products.
 The archival literature, i.e. peer‐reviewed publications of scientists and engineers,
can provide the secrets of new products.
 Patents literature.
• Other sources:
 Product experts
 Experts have particular knowledge of products we want to make.
 Experts retired from your or a competitor’s organization can be helpful.
 Private inventors
 This group can lead us to innovations beyond current thinking.
 Their pet ideas may be impractical, but may spark important ideas.
 Consultants
 Diverse; Most difficult group to characterize.
 Can be valuable as catalysts of ideas.
 University professors can be frustrating consultants; Excellent critics but poor
innovators.
Collecting the Ideas
• Ask the various groups to write ideas down and send them in.
• Writing forces an objectivity that can spark improvements.
• If ideas depend on chemical processes, a flow sheet can help.
• If ideas include chemical synthesis, guesses about synthetic routes and
mechanisms are helpful.
• Ideas collected this way form the core of our product ideas.
• This route rarely generates the 100 or so ideas that we will normally need.
• To get more, we need to assemble groups of 5 – 8 persons and ask them to
generate more ideas.
• Such “brainstorming sessions” have a formal leader to run the session.
Brainstorming
• The session will work best under a few rules:
 Use a common format (Have all groups cover the same topics).
 Generate ideas freely (Do not be worried that some ideas have problems).
 Forgo ownership (Ignore which idea is whose).
 Encourage eccentricity (Do not squash weirdness, even if it suggests the
impossible).
• Such sessions usually last for an hour or two.
• During the session, the group should keep a written record of its progress (leader
can do this; preferably appoint a separate scribe).
• These records can be posted around the room.
• These posters can be an enormous stimulant, since the group can refer back to old
ideas.
Brainstorming
• After about an hour, these sessions will tend to stall.
• Although the group’s productivity will drop, its creativity may actually rise.
• This is because, obvious avenues have been exhausted.
• Hence, most sessions should be kept going past this exhaustion point.
• To keep them going, consider the following stimuli:
 Invite criticism of ideas generated by other routes.
 List all assumptions made in the specifications; then dismiss them in turn.
 Use analogies.
 Probe opposites.
• Such stimuli encourage creativity in less explored directions.
Problem Solving Styles
• In brainstorming we see the emergence of different problem solving styles.
• Two important styles: Adaption and Innovation.
• Adaption is problem solving that uses existing or closely related technology.
• Innovation is problem solving that uses apparently unrelated information.
• Both innovation and adaption can be equally creative.
• Different professions encourage different styles:
 Accountants are usually adaptors: the last thing you want is an innovative tax
accountant.
 Successful entrepreneurs are often innovative.
 Chemists are more innovative than engineers.
 Remember: innovative is not a synonym for creative.
• Another style: the product “champion”, who wants the product to work, one way or
another.
Corporations also tend to have problem solving styles
Example – Doing Laundry More Efficiently
Example – A New Printing Ink
Example – Treating Radioactive
Waste Containing 137Cs.
Example – Treating Radioactive
Waste Containing 137Cs.
Module – 4.2
CHEMICAL SOURCES
OF IDEAS
Chemical Methods
• Often the strategies for generating product ideas show real

promise in meeting customer needs.
• For e.g., Better catalytic convertors or cheaper kidney dialysis

machines.
• In some cases, the general strategies will not help much, the
chemical compound to be made is unknown.
• This may be especially true for pharmaceuticals.

Chemical Methods
If target compounds are unknown, we can use chemical methods to

generate ideas. Three such methods:
 Natural product screening: Takes advantage of the rich variety of

active chemical species present in nature.
 Random molecular assembly: Molecular fragments are reacted in

plasma to see if the resulting tar contains pharmacologically active
species.
 Combinatorial chemistry: Uses robots to screen thousands, even

millions, of compounds which may have desired product properties.
Natural Product Screening
• The first route to new chemical ideas is to look for possible sources
in nature.
• The pharmaceutical industry has benefited by mimicking nature: e.g.

opium, aspirin, quinine, caffeine, codeine, etc. came from natural
sources.
• Other industries also have benefited: e.g., stevioside is a low calorie

sweetener derived from Stevia rebandiana.
• Sunillin is a plant‐based antifungal pesticide.

Natural Product Screening
Three ways in which natural products may be used to produce active
chemical species:
 If active ingredient is expensive or impossible to synthesize, it may be isolated
directly from an organism.
 Vincristine, for childhood leukemia, isolated from Madagascan periwinkle.
 A precursor may be isolated from a natural product and then used to make a
more complex molecule.
 Diosgenin, used in the first oral contraceptive, produced from a suitable precursor
extracted from the Mexican yam.
 The active ingredient may be identified in a natural product, but then used as
a model for a chemical synthesis of an identical or similar molecule.
 Reserpine, used to treat hypertension, first identified in the Indian snakeroot, but
now produced entirely synthetically.
Microorganisms in Natural Product Screening
Another approach:
• Begin with a culture that is known to produce active chemical species; the
microbes are stressed by chemical treatment or high doses of radiation to
mutate the microbes beneficially.
• New microorganisms can be tested by culturing them within an existing

colony of the target pathogens; species producing toxic chemicals will kill
the target pathogens growing close by.
• The chemical structures of these toxins can be done via chromatography,

mass spectrometry, and nuclear magnetic resonance.
• Then we can compare synthesizing the toxin via chemical methods or by

fermentation.
Plants and Aquatic Organisms in Natural Product
Screening
• Plants are a rich source of ideas, hardly touched.
• Of half a million species of flowering plants, only 5000 have been

extensively investigated for active chemicals.
• Potential of aquatic organisms recently started to be realized:
 Discordomolide ( a powerful immuno‐suppressant) extracted from a

Bahamanian sponge recently.
 Marinovar (an antiherpes agent) recently extracted from a Californian

marine bacterium.
Testing in Natural Product Screening
• Testing of microorganisms and plants dramatically accelerated by advances in

pharmacology.
• The US National Cancer Institute routinely screens extracts from natural
sources against an array of up to sixty distinct human tumor and cell lines in a
rapid automated test.
• Promising samples are then obtained in larger quatities.
• This high throughput screening based on microelectronics, robotics, and
advanced spectroscopy.
• These integrated systems can screen thousands of samples daily and pinpoint
those with pharmacological, agrochemical or other industrial utility.
Natural Product Screening and Traditional Medicine
• Traditional uses of natural products can be investigated to obtain important

leads.
• For instance, using traditional sources, Wittering in 1785, discovered that
ingestion of dried foxglove eased dropsy (the heart fails to pump properly).
• Today two components – digitoxin and digoxin – are prescribed to cardiac
patients to regulate and strengthen heartbeats.
• Calls for conserving the knowledge of traditional healers in the dying
cultures in Third World countries.
• E.g., flavanone is a topical anti‐inflammatory extracted from the tree bark
in traditional Samoan medicine.
Random Molecular Assembly
• Simplest of the three chemical methods.
• Used when we are uncertain of the chemical structure of the molecule we want
to make.
• For e.g., we want to make modified penicillin with some new substituents.
• Simply take an existing penicillin and some chemical species that contain the
core of the possible substituents.
• Preferably, these are dissolved in a homogeneous solution.
• This solution is injected into a plasma – an ionized gas with a high concentration
of free radicals.
• The radicals cause a plethora of chemical reactions.

• Under some conditions, we get a dark, viscous tar.
• This tar contains fragments of our original molecules jammed together in
near‐random configurations.
• This tar is tested for pharmacological (or other) activity.
• We may have a disease in mind – e.g., we want to test activity against a
gonorrhea bacterium that has developed high resistance to penicillin.
• Grow the bacterium culture in a Petri dish and put a drop of the tar in the
middle of the bacterial colony.
• If the tar has no pharmacological activity, the colony will continue to grow
unchecked.
• In a few cases, a drop of tar will kill the colony, destroying the
microorganisms.
• This means the tar has some promising molecules.
• We need to discover what these molecules are.
• To do this, we make a solution of this tar and separate the solution by high‐
pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC).
• This will give a crude separation of the tar into ~ 10 fractions.
• Each of the fractions is tested for pharmacological activity.
• We will normally find it is isolated in one or two fractions.
• We can further separate the most active fractions, using a different column.
• When we feel the species are isolated, we identify the chemical structures
using MS or NMR.
• This technique uses a brute force approach rather than any chemical insight.
• These plasma generated chemical species are essentially chemical ideas
found randomly.
Combinatorial Chemistry
• Core idea is to identify possible active ingredients or molecular fragments and
to test them all and in all possible combinations.
• For this to be practical, both combining of ingredients and testing of activity
need to be automated.
• This method very popular for biochemical problems.
• Most biological molecules are by nature sequences of a limited range of
alternatives.
• E.g., we want to investigate the efficiency of hexapeptides for affinity for the μ‐opioid
receptor.
• Houghton and co‐workers identified a potential library of 52,128,400 hexapeptides

which might have the desired affinity.
• This is a lot of work even for a robot. Hence they structured the problem.
• First they tested 400 alternatives, in which only the first two amino acids were varied.
Most efficient of these were taken as fixed.
• Next four amino acids were varied, i.e., further four tests of twenty alternatives each.
• Encouragingly, the final molecule identified has the sequence occurring naturally in
proteins that stimulate this receptor.
• This demonstrates the power of the combinatorial method.

• This example shows, even within the combinatorial method, there is

considerable skill and invention involved in identifying the parameters to be
varied.
• This is seen in the simple hexapeptide case and holds for even more
complex cases.
• In these even more complex cases, synergistic effects may play an important
role.
• The number of parameters may be more: concentration, temperature,
pressure, and pH.
• Judgment and chemical understanding remain critical in effective use of the
combinatorial method.
• Combinatorial method remains in its infancy.

• It is effective for catalyst screening (as shown in next example).
• Being proposed for identifying active polypeptides and DNA sequences.
• Up to 1991, 11 million compounds had been identified in the chemical
literature.
• By combinatorial methods, that number can be made in less than a week.
Combinatorial Chemistry – Example: Fuel Cell
Catalysis
• Problem: Optimize the composition of a catalyst for methanol fuel cells.
• Studied by Milhawk and co‐workers.
• Current technology: high surface area Pt‐Ru catalysts.
• Can we consider other Pt‐group metals – Os, Ir, Rh – as additves?
Catalysis
• Milhawk and co‐workers built a modified ink jet printer to spray dots of
mixed metal salts.
• They produced a 645‐member catalyst array.
• This included the five pure elements, 80 combinations of two elements, 280
ternaries and 280 quaternaries.
• Each catalyst dot is tested for activity by using a fluorescent molecule that
luminesces in acid but not base (H+ is produced in the catalytic cycle).
• On testing, the most effective catalyst simply lit up the brightest.
Catalysis
• The results were fascinating:
 A quaternary alloy, Pt(44)/Rh(41)/Os(10)/Ir(5), was found to be the most
effective catalyst!
 Actually, far more effective than the commerical binary.
 The most effective ternary was Pt(62)/Rh(25)/Os(13) – no Ru at all!
 These results could not have been achieved by conventional catalytic
testing: the required effort would have been too great.
A Comparison
SORTING THE IDEAS
Introduction
• Generating possible solutions results in a hodgepodge of ideas.
• It is like you don’t have a full frog to kiss, you have an incomplete frog.
• Situation similar to that of screening of candidates for a professorship:
 We get 100 applications that we need to narrow to five.

 First eliminate those who are unqualified (candidates without PhDs and without
publications or research funding over a long career).
 Next eliminate fresh PhDs without much research activity.
 Next eliminate noncitizens or older applicants (could be illegal).
 Next eliminate those in a particular subspecialty, like polymeric materials, which may
be well represented in our department.
 In this manner, we cut the no. of applicants to twenty.
 These twenty we would carefully study to choose the five for interviews.
Introduction
• Similarly, we start with 100 ideas.
• We first sort and prune these ideas, normally

reducing the number to around twenty.
• Next, we will use matrix-screening methods to

choose the best five.
Getting Started
• The first step is to list all ideas.
• The list will contain some redundancy

 Most often this will happen because some ideas are more general and some are more
specific.
 E.g., one idea could be:
 “Remove the flavor from the vapor.”
 A second idea could be:
 “Use a selective membrane to concentrate flavor from the vapor.”
 The second idea is a specific example of the first.
• The list will also contain ideas that are pure folly.
 This includes ideas that are irrelevant, perhaps recorded incorrectly, or not thought
through.
 Some ideas are just plain wrong
• Removing redundancy and folly will typically cut the no. of ideas by a third, i.e.,
from 100 to 70.
• For the rest, we need to organize the ideas further.
Organizing Ideas into Categories
• The hard part is to know what form the categories should take.
• No general rules.
• The structure will never be the same for any two sets of ideas.
• For e.g., the organization of ideas for recovering orange juice will be
different from that for a reusable detergent.
• The ideas themselves must be the basis of any organization.
• In many cases, the organization may be obvious to all.
• In some cases, the organization may be biased by our training as scientists
or engineers (or marketers, etc.).
Forming an Outline of Ideas
• Normal rules of outlining apply.
• Use around five headings, roughly equal in importance.
• If you have many more headings, see if some can be combined.
• Subheadings should be special cases of each main heading.
• Rarely use more than four subheadings.
• If there are more, consider combining them.
• Never use just a single subheading: if there is, the subheading
should probably replace the main heading.
Editing the Outline of Ideas
• Once the outline is made, it should be carefully edited.
• The editing will focus on three areas:

 Exposing gaps: e.g., consider the heading “Extract the deicer from water for
recycle.” This should really be a subheading under “Recycle the deicer.”
Such an editing can give us another subheading “Adsorb the deicer” that we
missed.
 Aligning the ideas with corporate strategy: Suppose, our company makes
centrifuges, and we may have ideas for membrane separations. This could
be a completely new direction for our company and hence beyond the
mission of the core team.
 Acknowledging the different patterns of thinking in different individuals:

some think linearly, some don’t.
• The resulting categories are illustrated next by means of examples.

Example: Adhesives for Wet Metal
• Adhesives are usually used on dry surfaces.

• We wish to produce a new group of adhesives that stick
to wet metal surfaces.
• Such an adhesive would have value in the automotive
industry.
• The ideas for such an adhesive are to be listed and
sorted.
Example: Reusable Laundry Detergents
Example: Reusable Laundry Detergents
Example: A Pollution Preventing Ink
• A printing company prints personal cheques with a lithographic ink

containing the carcinogenic solvent methylene chloride (CH2Cl2).
• The workers also clean the presses by wetting a shop rag with the
same solvent and scrubbing the presses.
• The solvent evaporates and risks workers’ health.
• Also, the rags have been classified as a hazardous waste and incurs
high disposal costs.
• Need for a different ink, one that has less negative environmental and
health impact.
• How to list and sort the ideas?
SCREENING THE IDEAS
Introduction
• We have seen sorting of ideas, which reduced the number of concepts for
more quantitative consideration.
• For simple product designs, the idea sorting may suggest only one or two
strong ideas – can then proceed directly to “Selection” stage.
• In other cases, we have to go through screening process.
• We need a basis for qualitative judgments to further reduce the selection.
• To compare different product ideas, we need a variety of criteria:

 Purely objective questions: “Which of these two absorbents has a greater capacity?”
“Which battery has greater power per mass?”
 More subjective criteria: “Which of the two fabrics is more wearable?” “Which of the
products is safer?”
 In more complex cases, we will be making compromises between two conflicting
criteria: “how to decide between different home air purifiers whose performance and
cost go up together?”
Strategies for Idea Screening
• Clearly, many possible strategies for ideas screening.

• Easiest approach: to look at the headings in the outline,
and choose the best candidate under each heading.
• This strategy works well if the product designs are
simple extensions of existing technology.
• A significant risk: two best ideas may be under the same
subheading.
• This strategy is very risky if there are many, very
different product designs.
Strategies for Idea Screening
• A more effective strategy is to determine factors by which to

evaluate the product:
 Scientific maturity. We prefer designs based on scientific knowledge
already understood.
 Engineering ease. We prefer designs that imply straightforward
engineering akin to that used in established manufacturing.
 Minimum risk. We prefer not to take chances; would like to know our
chances of success.
 Low cost. We want a rough estimate of relative cost of our ideas.
 Safety. We prefer products which are inherently safer.
 Low environmental impact. We prefer less pollution
 Other factors may be more subjective. E.g., “the product should be quiet”
or “the product should be comfortable”.
• We need to choose five or fewer factors that are most important.

How? Concept screening matrix.
Concept-screening Matrix
• The choice of most important factors is best made by consensus,

with the entire core team working together.
• In seeking this consensus, the team members need to be careful
not to compete, not to feel that their chosen factors will be “winners”
or “losers”.
• Need to note that some individuals are rational and some
individuals can precipitate polarization and win-lose arguments.
• Once the key factors are identified, we assign (normalized)
weighting factors to them. n

i 1
i 1
• Experience shows that the core team reaches the consensus on

weighting factors more quickly than on the choice of the factors
themselves.
ωi is weighting factor for attribute i.
Concept-screening Matrix
• With these weighting factors in hand, the key ideas are evaluated
on basis of some scale.
• Easiest scale ranges from a low score of one to a high score of ten.
• To begin, we assign an average score of five to the benchmark.
• Then each product idea is graded relative to this benchmark.
• We thus have a group of scores sij for each attribute i and each idea
j.
• The total score for each idea is then: n
Score ( j )    i s ij
i 1
• The ideas with the highest scores are then used for the next stage
of product design: selection.
Improving the Idea Screening Process
• The simple procedure outlined above can be

improved:
 First, a careful choice of the benchmark.

 In many cases, the benchmark will be an existing product with
the greatest market share.
 Or it may be, a potential product from competitors.
 Or it may be the best of the existing products.
 As a check, try to choose a different benchmark after a first
round of assessments, just to make sure our first benchmark is
best.
Improving the Idea Screening Process
 Second, check the core team’s scores against those of other
interested experts.
 One obvious group are other individuals in marketing outside our
core team.
 Another group are the lead users of current products.
 Third, make a sensitivity analysis of the weighting factors.
 Essentially, change the weighting factors within sensible limits to see
if this alters our rank ordering of the ideas.
 Usually, little change; if change is dramatic, re‐examine the selection
criteria – we may not have considered all major issues.
Improving the Idea Screeing Process
• An important assumption made in the matrix approach is that

everything can be scored and weighted linearly.
• This is approximately true only when the products are similar,

changed only in minor ways.
• The assumption of linearity is untrue if:
 The criterion is binary. E.g., the product may be judged noisy or quiet, with
nothing in between.
 The product will not work. E.g., the product may depend on making an
invention which may not be possible.
 The product changes the market. I.e., the product is so good that all other
criteria are irrelevant. The product is a “show stopper” or “game changer”
or “step‐out technology”.
Example – Home Oxygen Supply
• Those with lung disorders, including emphysema, can

sometimes benefit from breathing air enriched with oxygen.
• This oxygen is presently supplied as cylinders of nearly pure

oxygen, regularly delivered.
• This can be expensive; shifting of cylinders around the house

can be difficult, especially if the user is older.
• Need to find an alternative to gas cylinders to provide home

oxygen.
• Two reasonable alternatives: membrane separation and pressure

swing adsorption (PSA).
• The membrane separation uses selective hollow fibers in a module

like a shell and tube heat exchanger, but with tubes ~ 1mm in
diameter.
 It requires a pump to compress room air and force it across the fibers.
 This permeate air will contain perhaps 30% oxygen.
• The PSA unit uses an adsorbent, often a zeolite.

 The air at high pressure is forced through until the adsorbant is saturated
with O2.
 Then the flow is stopped and the pressure is released.
 The air coming out of the bed is enriched with O2.
 This system also requires a pump, as well as some valving.
• Need to choose key factors and evaluate the two ideas.

• The core team decided that there are three key factors:
 Convenience – this is marginally more important factor.
 Noise – may be unimportant to a geriatric patient who is deaf, but
important to anyone who lives with the patient.
 Cost – Important if the patient pays; however if the costs are borne by
insurance, not so important.
• All three factors of roughly equal importance.
• On this basis, we can prepare a concept‐screening matrix.
• Convenience is given a slightly greater importance than

either noise or cost.
• As benchmark, the gas cylinder is always given score of 5.
• The hollow fiber membranes have top score, followed by the
PSA.
• However, it may be harder to make a membrane with the
desired properties than to locate an effective zeolite
adsorbent.
Example – High Level Radioactive Waste
• Cesium, 137Cs, is a radioactive by-product of atomic weapons

manufacture.
• Other by-products can be precipitated using basic solution
but not Cesium.
• Cesium remains dissolved in aqueous solutions.
• Millions of gallons of this aqueous solutions are stored in
tanks in the locations where atomic weapons are
manufactured.
• If tanks leak because of aging or earthquakes, the escaping
cesium would spell disaster.
• How to make the cesium less dangerous?
• Several ideas have been suggested.
• Choice of benchmark – existing process

 Precipitation of the cesium cation with the tetraphenylborate anion.
• Key factors chosen:
 Known science
 Reliable engineering
 Safety
 Public response
 Cost not a factor since all processes expected to be very
expensive.
• Each of the promising processes scored by using these
criteria.
Conclusions
• This chapter describes the generation and screening of ideas, the

second step of product design.
• We welcome product ideas from every possible source:
 Core team
 Customers, competitors and consultants
 “Brainstorming”
• A useful target ~ 100 ideas.
• Then we organize the ideas, removing redundancy and pruning
folly.
• This gives ~ 20 candidates.
• We then use concept screening methods to evaluate further and
reduce the number to five or fewer.
• After the ideas are screened, we must select among the best
choices and manufacture the products. This comes next.
Second Management Review (The Second
Gate)
• Again the core team makes a presentation to the same senior

management group.
 This presentation will include both oral and written components.
• The management will decide whether or not to continue the work.
• The management team may be charmed by suggested innovations
and excited by product improvements.
• Management teams with nontechnical background may require help
in making reasoned decisions.
• The core team must, hence, be especially careful to be objective.
• The team must make sure to highlight not only the potential
rewards, but also the risks.
• After this stage, product development gets more expensive.
MODULE - 5
SELECTION OF IDEAS
Selection using thermodynamics,

Selection using kinetics,
Less objective criteria,
Risk in product selection.
1
Introduction
• So far we have discussed identifying needs, generating ideas to fill these

needs, and choosing a shorter list for further study.
• We now want to select the best ideas for further development.
• In some cases, one or two clear choices.
• In most cases, need to select five or fewer ideas.
• In selecting these few products, we can identify two separate situations:
 Compare products using only chemical and engineering criteria.
 Compare products not only on a technical basis, but also less exact
criteria, like “comfort” and “safety”.
Introduction
• In the first situation, we already have tools for selection from our
technical training: thermodynamics, kinetics, heat and mass transfer.
• The second situation is more difficult than the first:

 Uses both technical and less exact criteria.
 Less exact criteria include consumer reactions and public opinion.
 These criteria may change from one country to another, or evolve
over time.
 Akin to selecting between “apples and oranges”.
Selection Using Thermodynamics
• The selection of best idea out of a short list is easiest when the
proposed new products are modifications of existing products.
• These modifications most commonly involve ingredient
substitutions or improvements in performance.
• They are often based in thermodynamics.

Ingredient Substitutions
• Changes in a product’s chemical ingredients usually seek to duplicate its

current properties.
• Consider the search for less volatile, less toxic solvents.
• For e.g., methylene chloride (CH2Cl2), one of the most useful solvents, is a
carcinogen.
• Acetone (CH3COCH3) is more toxic than methanol (CH3OH).
• We want to replace such dangerous solvents with benign solvents.
• We want to equal product performance, but with additional benefits such as
safety and cheapness.
Ingredient Substitutions
• The best route to discovering new solvents is by experiments.
• A simpler and quicker route is to use solubility parameters.
• Cussler and Moggridge list solubility parameters of common solvents.
• To find a solvent giving the same properties as that we are replacing, simply
select the solvent with commensurate solubility parameter value.
• Thus chloroform may be substituted with benzene which has the same
value of solubility parameter.

Substitutions in Consumer Products
• Two special characteristics of consumer products:

 Isomerically pure chemicals are the same no matter what the source may be.
 This may be anathema to those interested in “natural foods” or “natural ingredients”.
 If a particular chemical isomer is pure, then a sample obtained from vegetable sources is
indistinguishable from a similar sample made in a laboratory.
 We can substitute a “natural” chemical with a “synthetic” chemical or vice versa.
 We need a convenient way of evaluating consumer attributes.

 Consider three attributes of skin creams: “thickness”, “smoothness” and “creaminess”.
 “Thickness” is proportional to the force of viscous drag.
 “Smoothness” is inversely proportional to frictional force during contact lubrication.
 “Creaminess” a geom. average between “thickness” & “smoothness”.
Ingredient Improvements
• We frequently want to improve products using ingredients that are superior

• Often ingredients have properties that depend strongly on temperature or
pH.
• Products whose properties change dramatically with temperature are the
more common case.
• An excellent example is a class of water soluble absorbents, like
monoethanol amines.
• We seek amines whose reactions are not only fast, but whose equilibria
with acid gases (e.g. CO2) change radically with temperature.
• Properties can also change with pH.

• Consider drug purification.
• Many drugs have –COOH or –NH2 group; this allows
purification by liquid-liquid extraction.
• At equilibrium:
Example: A Better Skin Lotion
• An employer manufactures a variety of skin care

products.
• Market research shows the need for a “thinner”,
“creamier” skin lotion.
• How to develop a lotion that is twice as “thin” but also
twice as “creamy”?
• What should be the ingredients?
Example: A Better Skin Lotion
• Consider a lithographic ink containing only four components (idealized): a

pigment, an oil, a resin, and a solvent.
• The pigment, usually colloidal carbon, not a key in pollution.
• The oil contains fatty acids with multiple double bonds; these double bonds
crosslink in presence of O2, making the ink permanent.
• The resin is good binder.
• The solvent, usually methylene chloride, is used to adjust the ink’s rheology
to give good printing.
• How to replace the methylene chloride with a less dangerous solvent?
• Three possible choices (from solubility parameter data): benzene, toluene
and naphthalene.
• Benzene is excessively volatile.
• Naphthalene is a solid at operating temperatures.
• Toluene is a good choice: still toxic and will generate emissions, but the
modified ink should work well.
Example: Antibiotic Purification
• We have a new acid antibiotic with pKa ~ 4.52.

• By altering pH, we want to alter the distribution of
the antibiotic between water and butyl acetate.
• What pH range to use?
Example: Antibiotic Purification
Selection Using Kinetics
Introduction
• If thermodynamics is the science of the possible, then kinetics is the science

of how fast and hence how expensive.
• For chemical products, three kinds of kinetics must be considered:
 The rates of chemical reaction
 Mass transfer rates
 Heat transfer rates
• Usually, heat and mass transfer coefficients are easier to estimate than
reaction rate constants.
• The basic kinetic concepts are reviewed in the next few slides.
Chemical Kinetics
• Chemical reaction rates must in almost all cases be determined by

experiment.
• You have studied basic first and second order kinetics.
• Zero-order reactions are also surprisingly common; such reactions are a
frequent result of chemical catalysis.
• For all above reactions need evaluation of rate constant which needs
experimentation.
• Easier to predict the maximum reaction rate – this is when the reaction rate
is controlled by mass transfer; mass transfer is much more easily estimated.
Chemical Kinetics
• Consider, for e.g., heterogeneous reactions.

• Consider only first order, irreversible cases.
• The apparent rate constant k of such a reaction is:
1 1 1
 
k k D a k surface
where kD is a mass transfer coefficient, a is the particle area per volume, and
ksurface is the surface kinetic rate constant.
• If surface reaction is very fast, mass transfer control
• Usually, kD ~ 10-3 cm/s in liquids and ~ 1 cm/s in gases.
• If reactions are homogenous, estimates of rates much harder.

Heat and Mass Transfer Coefficients
• Since heat transfer and mass transfer are physical processes, not chemical
changes, rates vary much less widely, and be more easily estimated.
• From the film theory of mass transfer, the coefficient is:
k=D/δ
where D is diffusion coefficient and δ is the boundary layer thickness.
• Usually, for liquids k ~ 10-3 cm/s and D ~ 10-5 cm2/s which implies δ ~ 0.01 cm.
• For gases, k ~ 1 cm/s and D ~ 0.1 cm2/s and δ ~ 0.1 cm.
• For heat transfer coefficient we turn to the classical Chilton-Colburn

analogy:
which relates mass, heat and momentum transfer.
• The above equation can be used to estimate heat transfer coefficients.
• For gases, α and D ~ 1 cm2/s, so we have (Reynolds analogy):
• For liquids, α ~ 10-2 cm2/s and D ~ 10-5 cm2/s, so we have
• These estimates can be used at this early stages, with further refinements
later.
Example – Device That Allows Wines To Breathe
• Wines – especially red wines – are often allowed to “breathe” by exposing

them to air before drinking.
• This causes reactions of oxygen with polyphenols and tannins which enhances
the flavor of the wines.
• The “breathing” depends on time of exposure.
• Uncorking a wine for 15 minutes before drinking is useless.
• On the other hand, exposing wines for prolonged durations turns them into
vinegar.
• Need to find a good technique to facilitate breathing.
The authors tried four methods of breathing:

1. Open the bottle for 15 minutes.
2. Decant into an open pitcher and let the wine sit 2 hours
3. Decant the wine fast three times, entraining air.
4. Shake for 10 seconds in a large glass.
A mass balance on oxygen transferred into the wine is as follows:
The estimates for our four experimental methods are summarized in next slide.
Example – A Perfect Coffee Cup
• A chain of coffee shops wants to develop an improved coffee cup.

• The current cup has a volume of 200 cm3 and a total surface area (including
top and bottom) of 200 cm2.
• The improved cup should keep the coffee at an optimal “drinkable”
temperature, estimated to be 51 oC, for as long as possible.
• Three ideas to accomplish this:

 A better insulated cup;
 A cup with its own, self-contained heater; and
 A cup with a thermal reservoir that melts around 50 oC.
• Need to select, among these, an idea that merits further development.
First we develop a mathematical model of the cooling coffee cup.

• The figure in previous slide shows that the model is consistent with
experimental data.
• The measure of τ is obtained from the slope of the curve. For the uncovered
cup:
• For the covered cup, τ is 40 min and U is 17 W/m2K.

• We are now in a position to select among the three ideas suggested above.
• Consider first the idea of a better insulated cup.

• This idea aims at decreasing U.
• Note - The coffee does not stay at drinkable temperatures, but passes
that temperature more slowly.
• There are many routes to this improved insulation.
• Some routes can be cheap.
• This simple, powerful idea merits further development.
• The second idea – a cup with its own heater – is weaker.

• In this idea, let the cup cool till ~ 510, then let the heater take over.
• The heater must provide a power of about:
• Since an average battery provides ~ 1W, this will need a lot of batteries.
• Does not make sense.
• Third idea is to build a coffee cup with a thermal reservoir, i.e., containing a
substance which melts ~ 500C.
• When hot coffee is added, the reservoir substance would melt, cooling the
coffee.
• When the coffee cools to below the substance’s melting temperature, the
substance freezes.
• This releases heat of fusion which keeps the coffee near the melting
temperature until all the substance is frozen.
• The coffee would then cool in the normal way.
• To progress further, we need information about possible substances.
• Possibly waxes: pentacosane (C25H52) or beeswax which melt ~ 530C.
• The heat balance is:
Less
Objective
Criteria
Introduction
• We are exploring ways of choosing between our better looking frogs

hoping one of them will grow into a prince.
• We have seen how to use chemistry and engineering in the selection
process.
• However, ultimately, subjective decision making will also be
necessary.
• This may take two forms:
 “Comparing apples to oranges” – i.e., making decisions between objective,
but different criteria. E.g., balancing cost against performance.
 Evaluating genuinely subjective issues – “what do people like?”, “how much
do they care?” – e.g. public reaction to nuclear waste disposal problem.
• This section is about introducing these elements into product selction.

Introduction
• The methodology of choice: concept selection matrix.
• Already introduced; has the following features:
 Generate a handful of important criteria on which to judge the ideas
 Weight the criteria according to their perceived significance.
 Score each idea for each criterion, often relative to a benchmark
 Calculate the overall score for each item by weighted summation.
 The product with best score is selected.
• In this section the level of detail incorporated in the selection matrix is greater.
• Distinguishing between the remaining ideas is harder.
• For carrying out the detailed calculations:
 Market research may be desirable.
 Canvassing for opinion beyond the core team often necessary.
 Thorough estimate of inaccuracies is required.
• Chemists and engineers are often uncomfortable with this subjective decision
making.
When to Make Subjective Judgments
• Since we dislike the idea of vague subjective choices, we tend to postpone
them as much as we can.
• The earliest and most important point at which subjectivity is unavoidable is
in determining the criteria to be used in selection matrix.
• In addition to cost and technical feasibility, we may also consider: noise,
humidity, cold, environmental issues, etc.
• Two things to remember:
 Canvas opinion widely.
 There may be more than one answer. For e.g., the British may not worry
about humidity in their homes, but this might be a crucial concern in Kuwait.
• Next point where subjectivity cannot be postponed is comparing unlike

objective criteria – apples versus oranges.
• This will be manifested in the weighting factors assigned to various
objective criteria.
• The weight assigned to each criterion depends on the customer.
When to Make Subjective Judgements
• Finally, subjectivity is inevitable in making decisions
such as – what is prettier, pleasanter, smoother, more
environmentally friendly?
• No satisfactory means of dealing with them.
• But it would be an error to ignore the purely subjective

or underestimate its importance.
• E.g., the French car, Citroen 2CV, sells because of its

“look” as well as its price and reliability.
• Such considerations may also creep into chemical

product design.
How to Make Subjective Judgments
• Cannot completely answer this question.
• Consider how to choose the criteria for the selection matrix.
• This is perhaps the most crucial step in decision making.
• Three aspects are key:
 Use independent criteria. E.g., crampons for mountain climbing need to be light and
strong. But light and strong are not independent criteria. A better single criterion
would be strength/weight ratio.
 Avoid repetition. This will imbalance the scores by invalidating the weighting factors
constructed.
 Use a complete list of criteria. Very important. The list must include all the important
factors. This can be difficult to achieve. Need to canvas opinion as widely as
possible and use inputs from market research and independent experts.
• Remember: After selection, only a few good ideas remain and the next
stage becomes substantially more expensive. Backtracking is easy and
less costly only up to the selection stage.
Why We Use Selection Matrices
• There are clearly many other ways to make a

selection:
 We could get someone else to choose – a manager or
a customer.
 We could go with our intuition.
 We could prototype and test each of our ideas.
 This will be reliable but costly, and slow – time to
market is often the prime determinant of success.
Why We Use Selection Matrices
• Several advantages to the systematic approach:

 The selection stage is the point of fierce management review.
 We need to justify our choice to those outside the core team.
 The decision matrix approach forces us to stop and seriously consider each
stage of the selection process.
 It ensures that we thoroughly document our deliberations.
 The need to weight and score each idea forces the core team to both
efficiently pool its resources and to search for external input.
 The need for justification of criteria, sensitivity tests etc., will make consulting of
experts and customers inevitable.
 The use of numerical scoring makes it harder for a single personality to
dominate the proceedings.
 The separate scoring of the different criteria ensures that the strengths
and weaknesses of each idea will be very obvious and opportunities for
enhancements by combination would stand out.
 Good, but imperfect, princes can be combined into improved models.
Place for intuition?
• Despite the systematic approach offered by the

concept matrix, no need to lose out on intuition.
• Always possible to override the conclusions of
the matrix – but it is better to realize you are
doing it.
• In reality, many business decisions are made on
gut feeling – products are often launched more
on a hunch than on sound reasoning.
• Using a concept matrix allows us to exercise
informed intuition.
Example – The Home Ventilator
• In older houses, the mean residence time of air ~ 40 minutes.

• In modern houses, the mean residence time ~ 12 hours (due to better
insulation and sealing).
• This is good for comfort and efficiency, but unhealthy.
• Excess CO2, CO, radon and formaldehyde can reach dangerous levels.
• Currently, no legislation in US to regulate turnover time of air in homes.
• But regulation exists for laboratory animals in US: air should be
replaced every 3 hours.
• Possible that legislation for humans will soon catch up.
• Need: Assuming that complete air replacement is required every 3
hours, is it possible to combine the economics and comfort of a tight
house with the health advantages of a leaky one?
• Simplest answer – open a window!
• The advantages of a tight house (higher efficiency) will be lost.
• But this will have the desired health benefit.
• Our benchmark – an automatic window that opens and closes such that air
is replaced every 3 hours.
• This device will be cheap and easy to retrofit into “tight” houses.
• Can we do better than this?
• We can try to exchange the air through a heat exchanger to minimize energy
loss.
• This will be more comfortable and more efficient than an open window.
• A disadvantage – in very cold climates, incoming air will be very dry whereas
outgoing air is wet; so we will lose humidity.
• Losing humidity will dry out the house making it uncomfortable.
• How to retain the humidity?
• Two solutions:
 Evaporate the water – expensive because of the latent heat required.
 Devise a ventilator that exchanges both heat and water vapor from the
outgoing air stream into the incoming one.
• Such units have not been commercially constructed.
• However, literature suggests that polyimide membranes could be
used for such an application.
• We thus have two alternative products to compare to our benchmark:
 Heat exchange with water evaporation
 Simultaneous heat and mass exchange.
• The selection procedure used is as follows:

 Use an engineering analysis to estimate:
 Feasibility
 Cost
 Energy saving
 Use the decision matrix to evaluate product value with
respect to a benchmark
• Analysis performed for Minnesota and
Cambridge (latter case in italics).
• The results of the calculations have been summarized.

• The summary recognizes that polyimide membranes are costlier than
aluminium sheets.
• We can assume that the production costs are same for both cases.
• Both heat and heat/mass exchangers look like winners in Minnesota.
• In Cambridge, the heat exchanger may be viable but the heat/mass
exchanger has little added value.
• This analysis not sufficient. Additional criteria: health, comfort noise.
• The decision tree with five criteria is drawn up in next table.
Conclusions:
• “Health” scores identically for all products – redundant – included for
completeness.
• Comfort not a problem in Cambridge – moderate climate; hence scores are
moderate.
• Both exchangers require a pump, hence irritating noise is a problem.
• In Cambridge the viability of these units is marginal; in Minnesota, their
viability looks good.
• The heat and mass transfer units looks somewhat better than heat transfer
with humidification unit.
• We have considered factors beyond the economic and engineering criteria.
• We have been forced to think hard about how to weight each criteria.
• The next stage: building a prototype – will be expensive.
Risk in Product Selection
Introduction
• In product selection, we must make a comparison between very different product
options.
• Often this is complicated by a combination of objective and subjective factors.
• E.g. considerations such as heat transfer must be balanced with questions such as
health and comfort.
• This often makes technically trained persons uncomfortable.
• In addition, we may not be sure that all aspects of all product options will work.
• E.g., we may be uncertain of the details of a chemical synthesis; we may be uncertain

if the heat transfer to a fluid of unusual rheology will be as fast as predicted from
standard correlations.
• In these cases, we are selecting between products with varying degrees of risk.
Introduction
This risk in selection can be considered in two

ways:
 First, judge how serious a particular risk is and how
much this risk will affect our product.
 Often this will translate to extra product development money and
additional product development time.
 Second, reduce the risk as much as possible, perhaps

by some quick experiments.
 Such risk reduction seeks to manage our chances of success.
This risk assessment and risk management are

considered in detail in the next slides.
Risk Assessment
The assessment of risk commonly involves three

steps:
 Identify and catalogue all risks.
 Decide if these risks can be estimated with engineering
tools.
 Compare the possible products in terms of both cost and
time.
Risk Identification
• Begins with making a list of any possible difficulties.

• Uses the same techniques as in the generation of
ideas.
 We must discuss the risks with our core team and others in the
organization.
 Especially, involve manufacturing who up to now may have been less
involved with product design.
 We must again contact our customers – esp. lead users.
 We can again check with consultants.
Risk Estimation
• Once we have a list of risks, we choose a probability and consequence of

each risk.
• The probabilities range from 0 to 1.
• If the chance of the risk happening is negligible, probability < 0.3.
• If the chance of risk is significant, probability ~ 0.5
• If the chance of risk is very likely, probability > 0.9.
• A risk with probability of 0.7 will happen once in 10 years, i.e., within the
normal lifetime of the chemical process equipment.
Risk Estimation
• In addition to the risk’s probability, we also estimate the consequences of

the risks.
• Again, choose a scale of 0 to 1.
• If the consequences of a risk are small, score it < 0.3.
• If the consequences of a risk are significant, score it ~ 0.5.
• If the consequences of a risk are severe enough to kill the project, score it
> 0.9.
• The evaluation of probability and consequences largely the responsibility
of the core team.
• Each core team member evaluates individually but the final assessment is
arrived at by consensus.
Risk Estimation
• This systematic procedure forces each member to think about each risk
and to consider his or her knowledge on the topic.
• Evaluation by consensus is better than evaluation by simple averaging.
 Consensus demands discussion.
• Once the probabilities and consequences have been agreed upon, the
risk level is defined:
[risk level]=[risk probability] [risk consequence]
• Keep only those risks that are above a specified level, perhaps 0.5.
Risk Estimation
• This “risk level” concept is reasonable for a comparison of similar chemical products having
relatively little risk.
• But not reasonable to compare technologies which may fail completely.
• Hence caution needed when one product idea has a large chance of failure or consequences are
drastic.
• But the definition of a risk level does focus our attention on key concerns with each product.
• Two types of cases:
 Those whose risk can be clarifed by chemical or engineering analyses.
 Those whose risk that cannot be clarified by such analyses alone.
• E.g. of analysable risks:
 The risk that a heat transfer correlation might be inappropriate.
 The risk that a product is highly viscoelastic.
• Such risks are evaluated not by the core team, but by specialists supporting the core team.
Risk Estimation
E.g. of risks that cannot be clarified by chemical or engineering analyses:
 Consequences of the marketplace.

 Consequences of politics.
 What if our chemical raw materials are available only from one supplier.
 What if our manufacturing requires new licences.
 What if we expect litigation from the local community to delay our facilities’
expansion.
• For all these risks, the core team must guess the extra time and money
implied.
• For instance, if we suspect our heat transfer correlations are in error, we may
estimate it will take our engineers six months to develop corrected
correlations.
Risk Management
• After identifying and quantifying, the risks and consequences, we need to

decide the appropriate response.
• Two choices:
 Reduce the risk before proceeding with product development.
 Accept the risk and proceed.
• The first strategy is more traditional method of risk management in product

development.
• It requires developing several different ideas to establish which is most
effective.
 Can be slow and expensive.
 But speed and time to market are important considerations.
 Delay itself is a commercial risk! – a competitor may reach the market with an
inferior product and gain most of the market share!
• Hence the second strategy is often attractive.
Risk Management
• Delay in product design can kill off our product idea.
• Hence, having evaluated the inherent risks in our different product ideas, we may want to
proceed to the manufacturing stage.
• It is a question of balancing the risk of delay against considerations such as health,

environment, or safety.
• This why these areas are heavily regulated to prevent companies from compromising to
speed product development.
• Two guidelines for resolving pitfalls when we are already committed:

 If the risk is high, keep the investment low. As the risk decreases, raise the
investment.
 Break the risk into increments, deciding where you will stop work if unsuccessful.
• This is why, in chemical process design, we first start with hand calculations, then build a lab
scale model and then a pilot plant version before actual plant erection.
Risk Management
Risk - Examples
Example – Power for Isolated Homes
• In many European countries, electricity companies can only charge fixed
connection fee and standard cost per unit consumed, regardless of the
homes’ remoteness.
• Laying many kilometres of cabling to connect a single house to the
national grid is clearly uneconomic.
• Need to investigate alternative sources of electric power for isolated
homes.
• Ideas:
 Very large number of ways of generating electricity, some obvious (e.g.
hydroelectric power) and some not (natural gas from manure).
 Idea generation and initial screening leads to the following contenders: a
diesel generator, wind power, solar power, and a fuel cell.
• Selection:
 Primary selection criterion is cost, both capital costs and the running cost of
providing the specified power.
 We can only charge the standard, national rate.
 The solution must be acceptable to the user.
• A decision matrix can be set up based on the considerations just

outlined.
• This might leave three contenders: the diesel generator, wind
power and the fuel cell.
• But before narrowing down on the best idea, we need to
consider risk.
• The major risks here are:
 Customer acceptability, including noise, and environmental considerations.
 Regulatory acceptability, including pollution and local permission.
 Maturity of technology, and
 Reliability
• Comments:
 The fuel cell is a relatively unestablished technology.

 Fuel cells operate reliably on H2 but less reliably with gasoline.
 These risks could be mitigated by further research.
 Wind generator is vulnerable to storms, and here there is risk of high

costs of repairs and maintenance.
 We cannot change the chances of wind turbines being rejected on

aesthetic grounds.
 On the whole the wind power option looks risky.
 In the short term, installing reliable diesel generators is best option.

Example – Taking Water out of Milk at the Farm
• Remote dairies have to ship their milk to a central processing facility –

major expenses involved.
• Could benefit from a method of removing only water to concentrate the
milk on the farm
• This means reducing ~ 4000 kg/day raw milk to ~ 1000 kg/day of
concentrate.
• Ideas: Four unit operations – evaporation, absorption, spray drying, and
reverse osmosis.
• Of these, after due process of selection, we arrive at evaporation.
• Within our choice of evaporation, three possible forms:
 The conventional falling film evaporator.
 Centrifugal evaporator
 Membrane evaporator
• Problem: Compare the evaporators’ performance and risk.

• We first need to work out the heat transfer area required for each evaporator to figure
out the costs involved.
• Standard design formulae available.
• Falling film evaporator:

 Our benchmark.
 Area = 100 m2
• Centrifugal evaporator:
 Area = 5 m2
 But fabrication costs ~ $50,000; too expensive for most farmers.
• Membrane evaporator:
 Area = 23 m2
 Fabrication costs < $1000
 Attractive commercially
• Next step is risk assessment. The riskiest is membrane evaporator and its risk
assessment is shown in next slide.
Summary and Third Management Review
(The Third Gate)
• This chapter aimed at selecting the best one or two product ideas for manufacture.
• The methods used for product selection often uses quick estimates of
thermodynamics and rate processes.
• Challenge is in comparing very different products.
• We use concept selection matrices to aid our selection.
• We must consider the importance of risk and what new engineering and chemistry are
needed to mitigate the risk.
• After these efforts comes the third management review:
 Need to write a report and make an oral presentation.
 The third gate is hardest because the core team will ask for a lot of money.
 Management may not understand chemistry, but they do understand money.
 This is the stage at which the product development is most likely to be cancelled.
 But if product still looks good, we proceed to manufacture.
MODULE 6
PRODUCT MANUFACTURE
Intellectual property,
Supplying missing information,
Final specifications,
Micro structured products,
Device manufacture.
Introduction
By this point, we are close to a decision on what we will

make and sell.
 Have identified a customer need.
 Have quantified the need in terms of product specifications.
 Have sought a large number of ideas to meet the need.
 Have organized and edited these ideas to reach a manageable
few.
 Have selected the best one or two ideas.
 Close to deciding what we will manufacture.
Introduction
• Manufacture builds on our background in chemistry and chemical

engineering.
• This includes thermodynamics, chemical reaction kinetics, transport

phenomena, and unit operations.
• Some of this background not central to the manufacture of commodity

chemicals, but important for specialty products:
 Some apply to micro‐structured products

 Some apply to chemical devices, such as artificial kidney.
Introduction
We will now explore three aspects leading to product manufacture:
 Intellectual property
 Often our new product will include some invention.
 Need to consider whether or not to seek patent protection.
 Patents give exclusive license to market our invention and command higher
prices.
 Choice to make: Patents or trade secrets.
 Finding missing information required to realize our products.

 Information needed to make sure our selected product functions as expected.
 Information needed for any patent applications.
 Need for planning experiments to obtain this information.
 Developing final specifications for the one or two possible products being
considered.
 This development is adaptive, not innovative.
Intellectual Property
• As product designers, we need to broaden our focus from technology and think of
broader issues.
• We need to reassure ourselves that the market is still existing; customer needs have
not shifted.
• We need to check that our selected product does fit into the markets believed to
exist.
• More important, we need to involve questions about intellectual property – patents.
• Patents prevent our competitors from making the same product.
• Patents can dramatically enhance the advantages of our being first to market.
• Core team may not have much experience in patents – need to talk to lawyers.
Patents and Trade Secrets
• Intellectual property classified as: Patents and Trade secrets.
• A patent is a contract between the inventor and the government.
• The inventor has to convince the government, represented by the patent office, that
the invention is new.
• Then the government gives the inventor exclusive rights to the invention for some
time.
• In return, the inventor gives the public a full disclosure of what the invention is and
how it works.
• Patents are valuable:
 They grant a period when the inventor can expect higher profits.
 Hence the inventor can easily recover development costs.
 The inventor has a chance of bringing the product first to market and selling it at a
higher price.
• A patent is a legal property. Just like a house or a car, patents can be owned, bought
and sold.
• They can be licensed, for fees ~ 3 – 6% of gross sales.
• Moreover, a patent can be international; many developing countries have a patent
system.
• In contrast to patents, trade secrets are nonpublic information used in manufacture
of product.
• E.g., a special catalyst, or important steps in activating the catalyst.
• Trade secrets are not legal property; vulnerable in two ways:
 Obviously, trade secrets can be lost with an employee who changes jobs.
 The employee may have developed these secrets or learned them on the job.
 The trade secrets can be lost if our competitor independently discovers the secret
and patents it.
 The ex‐secret is now the competitor’s property; this is true even if we had been
using the secret for decades before the competitor discovered it.
Our first decision: whether or not to patent our product.

Benefit of patent: Gives us legal protection.
Pitfalls of patenting:
 Although patents do give legal rights, they can be difficult and expensive to
defend.
 Many patent lawyers acknowledge that only a small fraction of infringement
cases are prosecuted.
 Most infringement cases are settled out of court, usually on confidential terms.
 Another problem is when the patents are broadly sought:
 Consider a drug company working on antidepressants which patents a huge
number of compounds.
 Since each patent includes a full disclosure of the chemistry, the entire set of
patents will provide an accurate record of the company’s expertise and strategy for
discovery; this can easily be exploited by its competitors.
Patents or Trade Secrets? – A Third Way
• Some companies have tried an alternative to patents and trade secrets.
• They do not patent an invention, nor do they keep it a trade secret.
• Instead they present it as a poster at some minor, poorly attended technical

meeting (esp. one that does not publish abstracts).
• They then keep a careful, notarized record of the contents of the poster,
including the trade secrets.
• Chances that a competitor will notice the secret is remote – the secret
essentially remains a secret.
• If a competitor does in the future discover and patent it, the original
discoverer can refer back to the poster presentation.
• Such an earlier disclosure invalidates the patent(s).

What can be Patented?
Three kinds of patents:
 Utility patents – most important for chemical products; discussed below.
 Design patents – involve ornamental features of an article of manufacture.
 Living plant patents – cover new plants asexually reproduced by the inventors.
• Utility patents are the most common.
• Granted for any useful, new and nonobvious composition of
matter, article of manufacture, or process.
• Most utility patents are complex documents, expensive to
prepare.
What can be Patented?
• In US, utility patents have a term of 20 years from the filing date of the
application.
• Hence we want to expedite the application as much as possible, so we

can get additional income from licensing the patent.
• Design patents are granted for 14 years for any new, original, and
nonobvious ornamental design.
• Comparatively simple and inexpensive – some believe that these are

underused in product design and development.
• We will henceforth consider only utility patents.

Requirements for Patents
Two major issues:

 What is patentable?
 How do we document our invention?
For a patent, the product must be:

 Useful
 Novel
 Nonobvious
“Usefulness” requirement is normally easy to satisfy.
 We are not interested in the commercial development of product without
any use.
“Novelty” requirement is harder to prove.

 The product should not have already been patented.
 The product should not have already been described in a printed
publication.
• “Nonobvious” requirement means the difference between the new

product and earlier products – “the prior art” – must be not obvious
to one having “ordinary skill in the art to which the invention
pertains”.
• “Nonobvious” requirement clearly introduces substantial uncertainty
in patenting process.
• The US Supreme Court tried to sharpen the “nonobvious”
requirement by urging inquiry into three areas:
 The scope and content of the prior art.
 The differences between the art and the claimed invention
 The level of ordinary skill in the field of the invention.
• Often we need to depend on the judgment of patent attorneys.

• US patent laws divide the inventive process into two steps:
 Conception
 Reduction into practice
• Conception is the formation of a definite idea of the complete invention,
including every feature sought to be patented.
• Conception is complete when one of ordinary skill could practice the
invention without extensive research or experimentation.
• Because conception is mental, courts also require reduction to practice
which is evidence that the invention works.
• Reduction to practice takes two forms:
 Actual – actual reduction requires construction of a device and demonstrating that
it fulfills its intended purpose.
 This is the inventor’s responsibility
 Constructive – constructive reduction is filing a patent application.

 This is the lawyers’ responsibility.
• Patent infringement is different from normal criminal offenses.

• A patent is a legal document, but the enforcement is entirely up to the
owner.
• Normally, if the infringement is unintended, the patent holder is entitled to
payment of a reasonable license fee.
• If it is shown that the infringement was wilful, damages of two to three
times this amount may be awarded.
• E.g. Glaxo‐Wellcome paid U of Minnesota $200 million.
• Two crucial points to remember:
 First, it is complex – imperative that you get assistance of a specialized lawyer.
 Second, intellectual property law has little to do with justice as it is normally
understood; it is just a set of rules.
SUPPLYING MISSING INFORMATION
Introduction
• We have seen how to make the final selection of our most promising
idea.
• We used information from
 Available literature
 From external experts
 From back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations
• This information is unlikely to be complete or rigorous.
• In order to embark on an expensive program of product development, we
need to know more product details.
• Discovering these product details requires further research and
experimentation
Introduction
Up to this point we have tried to minimize the work at each
stage:
 Simplified calculations have been employed.
 Experiment kept to a minimum.
 Literature research used only to establish if something is possible, with
little attention to how it might be achieved.
This has advantages:
 Streamlines product design
 Allows easy comparison between ideas
 Minimizes time to market
Now, however, detailed information is indispensable:
 We must confirm experimentally any information used already and fill in
the many gaps in our knowledge.
Introduction
• Difficult to generalize about what missing information will be
necessary and how best to obtain it.
• Every project has its own specific problems.
• For different problems, the information will vary enormously,
depending on:
 Level of literature interest
 Company’s prior activity in this area.
• At the least, we need experimental verification of relevant
reported data.
• At the other extreme, a full experimental program will be
necessary to demonstrate viability of the new, untested idea.
Introduction
• One example: for the design of chemicals, we need the synthetic pathway
for the active molecules.
• By the selection stage, we must have identified the active species and may
well have obtained it in small quantities.
• We need to identify a satisfactory commercial synthesis route.
• This needs to be done before moving on to the manufacturing stage.
• Many of the techniques in chemistry will be valuable.
• These tools will help us decide between the different reaction path
strategies for the active molecule.
Reaction Path Strategies
• Often, in attacking a product problem, we start to think of possible

molecules required for synthesis.
• We have seen how combinatorial chemistry and natural product screening
can assist in the process of idea generation for active chemical species.
• The molecules thus identified are unlikely to be available readily.
• A natural question: how do we make the molecules?
• One possible way is the “disconnection approach”
 Going backward from the target molecule to simple precursors.
 At each stage, we imagine breaking the structure of the target molecule; this
breakage is the inverse of the synthetic step.
 At each stage we also establish the synthetic method to go in the opposite
direction.
Reaction Path Strategies
• Usually several different disconnections are possible for any target

molecule.
• This suggests existence of many alternative synthetic routes for
complex molecules.
• An experienced organic chemist will be able to eliminate most of
these as impractical, leaving a handful of reasonable alternatives.
• If none of the potential synthetic routes appear viable?
 The target molecule can be ruled out as a useful idea.
 It may be highly efficacious, but cannot be commercially made.
 Alternatively, it can be extracted from a natural product or made via
fermentation.
Example – Synthesis of the Tranquilizer,
Phenylglycodol
Example – Sterically Hindered Amines for CO2
Removal
Example – Sterically Hindered Amines for CO2 Removal
• CO2 removal from gases is a vital element in

several plants, e.g. hydrogen plants.
• It can often be the bottleneck for capacity

expansion.
• Problem: Can we improve the CO2 removal from

gas streams? How?
Conventionally, gas sweetening is done by using amines by the following
reaction:
2RNH2 + CO2  RNH3+ + RNHCOO-
This reaction needs two moles of amine per mole of CO2 removed.
In 1974, a chemist, Guido Sartori, realized that by changing the amine, i.e.,
using a hindered amine, the reaction could be changed:
RNH2 + CO2 + H2O  RNH3+ + HCO3-
Only one mole of amine now required per mole of CO2 absorbed.
This is potentially a great improvement in efficiency.
• The above (diisopropylamine) is an example of a hindered amine.

• We do not know which hindered amine to use.
• Our specifications are likely to be:
 The new amine should double the capacity of the old plant or reduce
the size of absorption columns in the new plant.
 The rate of reaction for the hindered amine should be at least as high
as that for the conventional amines.
 We want the retrofit the old plant with our new product; therefore,
operating conditions must be similar to those used currently.
 In an operating plant, a corrosion inhibitor, containing pentavalent
vanadium (V5+), is present in the absorbing liquid. The hindered
amine must be stable in the presence of this inhibitor.
• Sartori and co-workers screened a wide range of possible hindered

amines to see how they met the above criteria.
• Sartori’s success:
 He established that hindered amines can indeed react with the 1:1
stoichiometry.
 He showed that highly hindered amines have very low rate constants while
moderately hindered amines have acceptable rate constants.
 This led to the rejection of highly hindered amines in favor of moderately
hindered amines.
 These moderately hindered amines were found to work well for typical
plant operating conditions.
 By alternating the side groups of the hindered amines, the requirements of
solubility and thermal stability could be satisfied.
 Finally, the moderately hindered amines were found to be stable in the
presence on the V5+ inhibitor.
 The new amines are now produced commercially.
FINAL SPECIFICATIONS
Introduction
• At this point, we are considering making only one or two products.
• The products may be:
 A chemical, such as a drug to counteract depression.
 A device, such as a new catalytic convertor for reducing NOx emissions.
• We want to choose final specifications for this product:

 For a chemical, need to specify its molecular structure, its final form and its required
purity.
 For a device, need to specify its physical size and shape and mode of operation.
• Each member of the core team must briefly write out these specifications,
and any differences must be resolved by consensus.
• The final specifications must also re-examine our competition:
 Compare our product with the best existing product.
 Identify expected improvements and state how large they need to be.
 Restate all assumptions and decide which assumption involves the most
uncertainty.
Introduction
• Again, at this stage, we want adaptive thinking,

not innovative (“out-of-the-box”) thinking.
• The final specifications are often aided by a
three-step strategy:
 First, define the product structure.
 Second, rank the product’s most important attributes.
 Third, review any chemical triggers.
• These three strategic steps are detailed next.
Product Structure
• Specifying product structure usually involves:
 Chemical composition. What is the product made of? If chemically

pure, what is its chemical structure? If a device, how can its
composition be changed without affecting its performance?
 Physical geometry. What product characteristics are fixed? Are
there fixed macroscopic dimensions?
 Chemical reactions. Does the product change chemically during
use? Do acids, bases, and salts affect these changes?
 Product thermodynamics. What is the product’s phase? Is the
product thermodynamically stable or metastable?
• This checklist stresses the product’s uniqueness.

Central Product Attributes
• The long list of product attributes can often be organized

under three headings:
 Structural attributes. Such as product’s physical properties, e.g.,

strength and elasticity. These attributes are more important for
devices than chemicals.
 Equilibrium changes. Many products show major changes in

equilibrium due to altered temperature, pH, or some other process
variable.
 Key rate processes. Rate of chemical reactions, and rates of heat

transfer, mass transfer and fluid flow.
• In our search for final specifications, this organization

helps us find the most important attributes.
Chemical Triggers
• What makes the product become active?
• What frees the product from its original thermodynamic

bondage?
• This step involves:
 Solvents. These dissolve or disperse the product so it becomes

useful.
 Temperature changes. E.g. regenerating an adsorbent by heating or
cooling.
 Chemical reactions. The most common occur because of pH changes
or hydrolysis.
 Other physical changes. May include pressure, detergency, and
electric field.
Example – Freon‐Free Foam
• Refrigerators are normally insulated with polyurethane foam.

• The foam is made by injecting the reactive monomers into the
space between the inner and outer walls of the refrigerator.
• Traditionally freon was injected along with the reagents.
• As the reaction proceeded, the freon evaporated, producing a foam
with 95% bubbles containing freon.
• Freon was a very effective insulator but banned by international
agreement.
• Need to find a substitute for freon that has same degree of
insulation.
Example – Freon‐Free Freon
• The degree of insulation strongly depends on the thermal
conductivity of gas given by:
• The foam blown by CO2 will provide only one third of insulation of
foam blown by freon of equal thickness.
• Foam blown by N2 is even worse.
• What to do?
• We will use the three-step strategy.
• Product structure:
 We want a PUF containing 95% gas bubbles.

 The bubbles should be small to avoid free convection.
 But if bubbles are very small, the foams may be
metastable – not a major problem in this case.
• The Key Attribute:

 The foam should be a good internal insulator. This is directly a
result of the thermal conductivity in the foam’s gas-filled bubbles.
 The thermal conductivity highly dependent on whether the bubbles
are large or small.
 Importantly, in small bubbles, the thermal conductivity is
proportional to the bubble size and the pressure.
 Thus we can make a better foam by having small bubbles or a low
gas pressure.
 The difference between small bubble and large bubble is given by
the Knudsen number Kn (mean free path/ bubble diameter).
 Choose bubbles such that Kn>>1.
• Setting Final Specifications:
 But getting bubbles smaller than 1 micron is difficult. How then to

reduce the thermal conductivity?
 The product designers have invented a PUF containing CO2 in the
normal way but in a bag made of metal foil.
 The bag is impermeable to all gases.
 Just before the bag was sealed, they added a spoonful of NaOH to
the bag.
 This NaOH reacts with any available CO2. (This is an important
chemical trigger.)
 As the CO2 reacts, gas pressure gets lower and lower, and the
foam actually became a better insulator than the original freon-
blown foam which it replaced!
Summary and Conclusions
• Product manufacture is the last step in product design and development.

• This is the point where the study of chemical process design usually
begins.
• Key decisions on product manufacture involve intellectual property,
supplying missing information, and setting final specifications.
• IP decisions focus on whether to patent a product or not.
• Supplying missing information is often demanded by patent applications
and helps us get ready for manufacture.
• Setting final specifications is a check on our thinking and helps restate what
we are doing and what advantages we have over any competition.
• The rest of the chapter focused on specialized topics: microstructured
products and device manufacture which are skipped presently.

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MODULE – 1

Commodity v/s Specialty,

How will we make our product?

What product will we make?

Answering the second question will

Products made by chemical industries

Commodity Products Chemical Products

Specialty chemicals Formulated Products Assembled Products

50% of the market of CPIs is currently made of specialty products!

Typically contain 4 to 50 components and cover a wide range

(Favre et al., Trans IChemE, vol 80, Part A, pp 65 – 74, 2002)

(Favre et al., Trans IChemE, vol 80, Part A, pp 65 – 74, 2002)

 Batch type operations, in contrast to continuous operations for commodities.

• Natural rubber (polyisoprene) obtained from rubber plant.

• This lead to the discovery of TEL as the best antiknock agent.

• Lead arsenate, another insecticide, is dangerous to humans.

• Plunkett synthesized tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) and stored it in pressure cylinders.

• PTFE patented in 1941 and given the trademark Teflon in 1944.

• Bonding of Teflon to metallic surfaces accomplished by French engineer Marc Gregoire.

• Patent granted in 1954 to use Teflon as nonstick material in cooking pans.

• Ronald Reagan was named the “Teflon president”.

• 3M is an adhesive company that produced the Scotch tape and the

Villadsen, Chem. Eng. Sci., 52(17), 2857 – 2864 (1997).

Commodity manufacturers are facing a crisis:

 Ruthless minimization of research and concentration on in-house efficiency

 Many firms are leaving the chemical business

 Some are turning to specialty products.

Corporations organize product development in two ways:

• Both can be effective

• Functional organization is like a chemical reaction in series.

• Project organization is like a chemical reaction in parallel.

• “Necessity is the mother of invention”

• Market pull: There is a market looking for a technology, e.g., Freon.

• There is a technology looking for a market, e.g., Botox. Technology

• A “platform technology” is a technology successful in one or more

Product design depends on four steps:

• Not general (yes, the steps will usually have to be iteratively

• Management, not technology, is the key (no, can management

• Product design is a part of process design (no, we must go

• Product design emphasizes decisions made before those of process design.

• Commodity chemical manufacture best served by process design (no

• Specialty product development best served by product design (product is

• Focus of process design is efficient manufacture (recycle, heat integration,

Process Design Product Design

3. Reactors and Recycles 3. Select among Ideas

4. Separations and Heat 4. Manufacture Product

Needs and Specifications

• Chemical product design begins by identifying the customer

• Who are these customers and how can their needs be

• When our product is primarily used by consumers their needs

• These needs must be translated into product specifications.

• These specifications will require continuing revision and re-

• This revision greatly facilitated by using “benchmarks” which are

• Elucidating customer needs involves three sequential steps:

• In each step, we must be careful not to narrow the product definition

• Our primary source should be the final users of the product.

• The users can be organizations, including government agencies.

• These users needs to be contacted and a time arranged to discuss

• Lead users depend very much on existing and competing products.

• General consensus: face-to-face interviews are the best to discuss needs.

• Each member of the core team must write out:

• Core team should develop a standard interview format to ensure a common

• Interviews depend on interviewers’ skill in eliciting useful responses.