CHAPTER 7. Process Intensification in Continuous Crystallization

Process intensification (PI) is a design approach that offers concrete benefits to improve the performance of processes and processing within many branches of the chemical, food, and pharmaceutical industry. Crystallization, an important unit operation within these industry branches, may also benefit from PI. Generally, the PI approaches can be categorized in four fundamental domains (time, space, function, energy). Continuous processing of crystallization is already by itself one of the PI approaches within the time domain. Although PI can also be achieved using batch crystallization concepts, this chapter will focus on PI approaches from all four domains beneficially applied in continuous crystallization settings. Each principle is illustrated with examples from academia and/or industry. Perspectives on the level of maturity of these examples and future PI challenges rounds out the chapter.