Completely revised to reflect advances in this fast-changing field, this new edition features 35 % new content. It retains the interdisciplinary approach that elegantly combines the chemistry and engineering to explore the fundamentals and optimization processes involved.
Economic needs as well as ecological demands are major driving forces in improving chemical processes and plants. To meet these goals processes have to be intensified in order to get products of higher quality, to increase yield by reducing or even suppressing by-products and to minimise energy consumption. A preferred principle for such intensifications is process - tegration, especially integration of reaction and separation operations. S- entific research in this field has been boosted by certain extremely succe- ful examples like the Eastman-Kodak process for methyl acetate or the MTBE process which are milestones for this method. In 2002 the German Research Foundation defined process integration as one of the major - search topics for the next decade. In 1998 the Department of Biochemical- and Chemical Engineering at the University of Dortmund decided to pool its activities for concerted - forts in process integration and to form a joint research cluster. Our interest was to find out the general challenges as well as obstacles of integrated processes and to work out methods for their design and valuation. Soon it became clear that theoretical work only cannot give reasonable answers.
This interdisciplinary approach combines the chemistry and engineering involved to describe the conception and improvement of chromatographic processes. The book covers recent developments in preparative chromatographic processes for the separation of „smaller“ molecules using standard laboratory equipment as well as the detailed conception of industrial chemical plants. Following an introductory section on the history of chromatography, the current state of research and the design of chromatographic processes, the book goes on to define the general terminology. There then follow sections on solid materials and packed columns process concepts. Final chapters on modeling and determination of model parameters, the design and optimization of preparative chromatographic processes and chromatographic reactors allow for the optimum selection of chromatographic systems. Essential for chemists and engineers working in the chemicals and pharmaceutical industries as well as for food technologies, due to the interdisciplinary nature of these processes.