Scale‐Up of Catalyst Recipes to Commercial Production

Scale-up involves mostly the application of known chemical engineering principles to achieve the desired mass and heat transfer results. The main principle for scale-up is to maintaining dynamic similarity for the laboratory system and the commercial system. This chapter discusses the approaches to optimizing the recipe and scale-up issues. Scaling up a laboratory recipe to commercial production involves in not only making the desired catalyst but also making the entire production process economically and environmentally feasible. Even in simpler polyethylene catalyst recipes, the economics of scale favor the manufacture of catalysts by specialized catalyst manufacturers with dedicated facility rather than an attachment to a polymerization plant. To understand the scale-up needs, it is useful to look at a modern polymerization catalyst production facility. In order for commercial catalyst production to be viable, reactant and solvent recovery and waste treatment must be considered to complete the scale-up process.