Process Intensification – An Insight -Raghu Krishna Moorthy, Sangeeta Baksi and Soumitra Biswas Technology Forecasting & Assessment Council (TIFAC), New Delhi 4 th . Floor, ‘A’ Wing, Vishwakarma Bhavan Shaheed Jeet Singh Marg, New Delhi – 110 016 Genesis The process economies of chemical industry are fraught with two major challenges namely, capital investment and operational expenses. While one could be reduced at the cost of the other, simultaneous reduction in both the costs would result in an optimal solution. Improving process efficiency to lower the equipment volumes and simultaneously combining a number of unit operations in an equipment would bring down associated capital investment. Process Intensification typically addresses these aspects of cost optimization either by miniaturization of equipment or by synergizing various process steps. Process intensification (PI) can be defined as a set of innovative technologies that focuses on minimization of plant profile thus reducing capital costs and their integration to achieve high capacity, reduced footprint (area), increased selectivity and enhanced heat and mass transfer rates. 1 It involves constant miniaturization and integration of engineering methods and equipment. 7 Its approach towards design of sustainable chemical processing plants is based on four dimensions namely, structure, energy, synergy and time. 2 The term, ‘Process Intensification’ was introduced in 1960s by an East-European publication on Metallurgy. In 1983, Prof. Colin Ramshaw, widely regarded as the father of process intensification (PI), developed first set of innovations related to the subject in separation processes. 1,2 His work analyzed the effect of high gravity field in distillation and a hybrid strategy to combine separation with reaction processes in a single column packed with catalyst. 1 In the 10 th Annual Research Meeting of Institute of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) on process intensification held in the same year, the first research paper from South Africa was based on intensive underground processing of gold ore. 3 A total of 16 papers concerning the fields of mineral processing, heat transfer, chemical reactor and plant design with control were presented in the aforesaid meeting. 3 On a commercial scale, Eastman Chemicals set up a reactive distillation tower in 1980s with multifunctional capabilities reducing 80% energy requirements as compared to conventional operations. 4 Throughout the next two decades, mostly within United Kingdom, a lot of improvised versions of PI sprung up utilizing the concepts of centrifugation, enhanced heat transfer based on spatial domain and micromixing. In 1995, the first full conference on PI for chemical industry was organized in Antwerp, Belgium by UK-