Extraction Centrifuges—Intensified Equipment Facilitating Modular and Flexible Plant Concepts

In recent years, modularization of chemical production plants has become a widely discussed trend to overcome some of key issues the chemical industry struggles with. High volatility in raw material and customer markets, shorter product life cycles, cost pressure and increasing competition are just a few of them. Modularization of chemical production offers the opportunity to deal with these issues. The unit operations, which are capable to be applied in modular plant concepts, are subject of on-going research. On the reaction side, tubular continuous flow reactors are typical assets and methods for design and operation are available on a high technical level. Separation units on the downstream side are not yet developed to technical maturity. This paper focuses on extraction centrifuges, which are promising devices due to their large range of application, small volumes, high separation efficiency and excellent scalability. Industrial examples show the performance of extraction centrifuges in multi-purpose large-scale production facilities and prove that these units are predestined for application in modular plants.