Chemical product design: Advances in and proposed directions for research and teaching

Highlights

• An updated Grand Product Design Model is presented.

• Recent developments in methods and computer aided tools for the design, analysis, and development of chemical products are discussed.

• Proposal for including new developments in chemical products and processes in teaching and to prepare the new generation of chemical engineers is discussed.

• Challenges and opportunities for research in integrated product and process design are highlighted.

Abstract

After its launch at the turn of the millennium, integrated product and process design has gradually taken root in research and teaching within chemical and biological engineering. The transition from primarily process design in which the product is relatively well defined to include product design where the product has yet to be identified is driven by economics and the need to innovate. With globalization, any product that can be made by multiple producers would eventually exert enormous financial pressure on all these producers to lower product price, resulting in squeezed profit margin. The only way for a company to survive and prosper is to invent innovative products that can be manufactured sustainably. Also, with the rapid advances in computer technology, emergence of new business models, and requirements in social responsibility and sustainability, a chemical engineer should, and is well positioned to, contribute to the entire product life cycle. This article identifies the technical and non-technical issues and/or problems in integrated product and process design, the relationships among which are captured in a Grand Product Design Model. The methods and/or techniques and computer aided tools for the design, analysis, and development of molecular products, formulated products, functional products, and devices are discussed. Many of these recent developments have been included in teaching product and process design to prepare the new generation of chemical engineers. Possible future developments are also identified.

Introduction

Chemical product design is a diverse subject. In addition to the basic science and engineering underlying the product under consideration, consumer preference, budget, competing products, pricing, supply chain analysis, government policy, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and so on also need to be taken into account in designing and developing a product. Fung et al. (2016) proposed a Grand Product Design Model, which shows the relationships among the different tasks and/or problems in the product design and development process. An updated Grand Problem Design Model that incorporates the impact of supply chain analysis, government policies, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability on product design into the original model is given in Fig. 1. Normally, the development process for a product begins with consumer preferences, which define the desired product quality. The ingredient and production process are then appropriately selected (or designed) to yield product properties and product structure, which together provide product attributes that meet product quality requirements (middle of figure). Note that supply chain analysis is used to optimize the selection of product ingredients (left of figure) (Martín and Martínez, 2018, Zhang et al., 2019). Government policies can significantly influence the choice of ingredients and the production process, as well as the product price and costs (left of figure). Corporate social responsibility that is quantified by donation to charities, reduction in greenhouse gas emission, potential of damage to ozone, job creation, employee training, and so on depends strongly on sustainability and government policy (Zhang et al., 2018). After accounting for product cost and non-manufacturing expenditure, a pricing model is needed to maximize profit while meeting corporate social responsibility. Other issues may also be considered such as sustainability, company strategy, aesthetics, human senses, and so on. This model is part of a hierarchical, multidisciplinary framework for chemical product design (Seider et al., 2017). There are 5 elements (highlighted through different colors in Fig. 1) of the design framework that are used for carrying out product design. Model-based methods, rule-based methods, and databases do not involve hardware while computational and experimental tools do. Note that not all models from Fig. 1 are considered in all product design problems. Only those models representing the issues that are of interest in the multi-objective function determining the best product would be included (bottom right of figure).

Many types of chemical products have been considered in product design. These include, considering only publications after 2000, fuel additives (Sundaram et al., 2001, Hada et al., 2014, Zhang et al., 2018); refrigerants (Sahinidis et al., 2003; Zhang et al., 2015); perfumes (Mata et al., 2005); slow release deodorizer (Street et al., 2008); aroma design (Korichi et al., 2008a, Korichi et al., 2008b; Selway et al., 2012); medical diagnostic products (Heflin et al., 2009); disinfectant (Omidbakhsh et al., 2012); biofuel (Dahmen and Marquardt, 2016); solvents for reaction synthesis (Zhou et al., 2015; Struebing et al., 2017) and many more. A classification of the chemical product types is given by Seider et al. (2017). A review of these publications shows that one or more of the five elements of the design framework is used for design of these products. Model-based design methods often play a prominent role. For example, Bernardo and Saraiva (2015) treated a product design problem as the inversion of three design functions: quality, property, and process functions. Xiao and Huang (2009) developed a model for paint design. Often, two or more of the elements are used synergistically. For example, Wibowo and Ng, 2001, Cheng et al., 2009, Smith and Ierapepritou, 2010, Conte et al., 2011 and Mitrofanov et al. (2012) used a combination of rule-based methods, model-based methods, and data-bases in the design of different types of product. Experimental tools are needed in product design either for obtaining data such as material properties that are not available in the database or for fabricating a product prototype for testing its performance (Conte et al., 2012). Similarly, computer-aided tools for product design are highly desirable (Kalakul et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2019). They can serve to quickly generate promising product candidates that can be verified through experimental techniques.

Most of the publications in chemical product design focus on ingredients, process design issues, material properties, and product quality of the Grand Product Design Model (Fig. 1) and relatively little has been done on product pricing (Bagajewicz, 2007, Bagajewicz et al., 2011; Chen et al., 2018), corporate social responsibility and government policies, sustainability, and so on. This is natural because materials and processing are Chemical Engineers’ core competencies. However, these other problems need to be considered in order to answer the seemingly simple question of “what to make?” Making a product that has the best quality on the market does not guarantee commercial success. The product can be priced beyond the consumers’ budget even if it has all the product attributes to satisfy the consumer preferences. In product design, nonmanufacturing costs such as legal and advertising costs can be substantial for some types of products. This is in stark contrast to process design of bulk chemicals where the raw material cost usually constitutes between 40 and 60% of the product cost. Government policy has a huge impact on what to make. Without government subsidy, electric vehicles (and all the chemical products associated with them) and solar panels would take much longer to open up the market to drive down the product cost. A product proposed by the marketing and engineering teams may not be approved by management because of social responsibilities.

In this article, the aforementioned problems are reviewed in more detail focusing on the design and analysis of the major types of chemical products – molecular, formulated, functional, and devices. Special emphasis is placed on the PSE methods and tools for their design. In view of the fact that product design is being incorporated into the chemical engineering curriculum around the world, the recent developments on the educational front are also discussed. The article ends with a discussion of the challenges, gaps, and opportunities in product design. Unless otherwise mentioned, “product design” in this article refers to “chemical product design”