Telephone (+49)231 755-2339
Fax (+49)231 755-2341
Laboratory of Plant and Process Design Emil-Figge-Str. 70 Geschossbau 2 44227 Dortmund Germany
Room G2-R3.20
Tim Seifert studied chemical engineering at the TU Dortmund. Beginning in 2005, he graduated in 2010 with a diploma thesis dealing with a modell based profitability analysis of a modular continuous production of recombinant proteins. Since August 2010 he works as scientific assistant at the Laboratory of Plant and Process Design at the Technical University of Dortmund.
Globalization, increasing product diversity, uncertain markets and shorter product lifetime are the new challenges in chemical and biochemical industries. Thereby modularization can be an opportunity to approach these challenges by reducing the planning and construction time.
The idea is to use standardized modules with fixed capacities instead of designing a highly optimized process with custom made apparatus. Reusing apparatus designs supersedes detailed engineering of apparatus and reduces the planning period. Construction time can be reduced preassembling the predefined modules in a shop. Thus time and costs for at site construction are minimized because e.g. the construction is independent from weather conditions, site supervision is reduced and the modules can be pretested in the shop.
However using modular design will bring changes and challenges. Working with a limited number of apparatus sizes implies that interactions between the different unit operations have to be considered. Therefore process parameters might have to be adapted to reach required output and purity.
The research aims at analyzing the influence of using fixed apparatus sizes on process economy and finding strategies for modularization. This work is carried out within the European project “F³-Factory: Flexible, Fast and Future Production Processes", incorporating 16 companies and 12 universities and institutes.
