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q Institution of Chemical Engineers
Trans IChemE, Vol 78, Part A, January 2000

AN INTRODUCTION TO CHEMICAL PRODUCT DESIGN

G. D. MOGGRIDGE and E. L. CUSSLER*
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
*Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA

his paper derives from an undergraduate course in chemical product design which we
rst taught in 1998/9 and are still in the process of developing. We are in the process of
writing a text book to accompany such courses. We explain our approach to chemical
product design and why the subject is important. The distinctive features of product design
(particularly in contrast to process design, a more familiar topic for chemical engineers) are
outlined in Section 1. The emphasis is on decisions which are required before chemical process
design can be started. Our chemical product design course is a response to major changes in the
chemical industry which have occurred in recent decades. These changes, described in Section
2, involve a move in the industry away from the manufacture of commodity chemicals and
towards speciality chemicals and other high added value products. The former is well served
by traditional process design, the latter benets also from product design.
Section 3 describes the product design procedure that we use. It is a simplication of
procedures already used in business development and manufacturing engineering (see, for
example, Ulrich and Eppinger1). Such a simplication claries the sequence of ideas involved
and also forces us to consider in detail the technical questions implied in specic products. Our
approach is aimed at those with training in engineering and chemistry, but may also be a
benecial challenge for those whose training is largely in business.
Keywords: product design; chemical products

1 WHAT IS CHEMICAL PRODUCT DESIGN?

and recovers the energy carefully secured by insulating

the house in the rst place.
What these products do have in common is the procedure
by which they can be designed. In each case, we begin by
specifying what is needed. Next, we think of ideas to meet
this need. We then select the best of these ideas. Finally,
we decide what form the product should take and how it
can be manufactured.
Chemical product design is this entire procedure. Initially, when we are deciding what the product should do,
we expect major input from marketing and research, as
well as from engineering. By the end of the procedure,
when we are focused on the manufacturing process, we
anticipate a reduced role for marketing, but a major effort
from engineering. However, we believe that the entire effort
is best viewed as a whole, pushed through by integrated
teams drawn from marketing, research and engineering.
The ink, the acid gas absorbant, the electrode separator
and the home ventilator provide examples of chemical
products. Their design is different from that of chemical
processes. In process design we normally begin by knowing what the product is, and how much we want to make.
Usually it is a commodity chemical of well dened purity;
ethylene and terephthalic acid are good examples. This
chemical will be sold into an already existing commodity
market. The focus of process design is efcient manufacture. This is most often achieved by using a continuous
process, requiring optimized and dedicated equipment,
which is thoroughly energy integrated. This type of careful
process design is essential in order to compete successfully

We divide chemical products into three categories. First,

there are new speciality chemicals which provide a specic
benet: pharmaceuticals are the obvious example. Second,
there are products whose microstructure, rather than molecular structure, creates value, such as paint and ice cream
(see for example Edwards2). The third category of chemical
products are devices which effect chemical change: an
example is the blood oxygenator used in open-heart surgery.
In most cases, chemical products like these have high
added value but are made in small amounts in generic
equipment. This is in stark contrast to commodity chemicals, which are produced in large volumes at small prot
margins in dedicated equipment. Commodity chemical
manufacture centres on the design of the chemical process.
Chemical product design includes deciding what to make
and how to make it.
Consider four chemically-based products: an amine for
scrubbing acid gases, a pollution-preventing ink, an electrode separator for high power batteries, and a ventilator
for a well insulated house. These four products may seem
to have nothing in common. The amine is a single chemical
species capable of selectively reacting with sulphur oxides.
The ink is a chemical mixture, including a pigment and
a polydisperse polymer resin. The electrode separator is a
mechanical device which provides a safeguard against
explosion if the battery accidentally shorts out by preventing the migration of chemical species. The ventilator
provides fresh air, maintains humidity levels in the house
5

MOGGRIDGE and CUSSLER

in the commodity chemical business, where margins are

small and direct competition erce.
The type of chemical products which we are discussing
are completely different. Their prot potential arises not so
much from their efcient manufacture, more from their
special functions. They are likely to be made in batch and
using generic equipment; or may themselves be small pieces
of equipment. Process efciency may be less signicant
than time to reach the market place. Energy integration can
be expected to be an issue of only secondary importance.
Indeed, most of product design may occur before manufacture is even an issue.
We believe that chemical product design merits increased
emphasis because of major changes which have occurred
in the chemical industry. We do not argue that the chemical
engineers concern with process design should disappear
but we do assert that the topics studied should reect the
nature of todays chemical industry, as outlined in the next
section.
2 WHY CHEMICAL PRODUCT DESIGN
IS IMPORTANT
The design of chemical products has increased in importance as a result of major changes which have occurred
over recent years in the chemical industry. To understand
these changes, we will review the industrys recent history,
using the development of synthetic textile bres as an
example. We will see how employment patterns have
been affected. Management style and structures have also
altered to encourage a more integrated approach to product
development, involving engineers at all stages of decision
making.
Changes in the Chemical Industry
Between 1950 and 1970 the production of synthetic
textile bres increased dramatically, as shown in Table 1.
During this period the production of natural bres was
about constant, but the production of synthetics grew 20%
per year. This growth was comparable to that of the software
industry today; Du Pont can be considered as the Microsoft
of the 1950s. It was a golden age for chemicals.
From 1970 to 1990, synthetic textile bre production
grew by less than 5% per year, roughly the same as the
growth rate of the world population. The industry stayed
protable by consolidating production into bigger plants,
designed for greater efciency in making a single product.
The development of computer-optimized design was a
consequence of this trend. Small producers were forced out,
due to the economies of scale which could be achieved in

Table 1. Annual textile bre production (106 lb). From 1950 to

1970, synthetic bres grew about 20% per year. Since then,
their growth has been only around 5% per year. (Source:
P. Spitz3, US Department of Commerce).

Cotton, wool
Synthetics

1948

1969

1989

4353
92

4285
3480

4794
8612

large plant. For example, the number of companies making

vinyl chloride shrank from twelve in 1964 to only six in
1972 (Spitz 3).
In the present decade, the industry has developed new
strategies to stay protable. These strategies often focus
on restructuring, which has been three times more likely
to affect engineers than the general population. Under
the guise of `restructuring, `downsizing, `rightsizing, or
`rationalization, this has meant many mid-career engineers
suddenly looking for new jobs. The Engineering Workforce
Commission believes that todays engineers will average
seven different jobs per career, a dramatic change from
two per career which could be expected in the recent past.
Middle management is no longer the safe haven it once
was. While starting salaries for chemical engineers remain
high, the envy of other technical professions, the growth
of these salaries has not outpaced that of average salaries
in thirty years. Most recently, the chemical industry has
become enchanted with the life sciences, often called `biotechnology, most successfully represented by applied
agronomy, i.e. by genetically modied seeds.
Having exhausted optimization and restructuring as ways
to stay protable, chemical companies now have three
remaining options. First, they can leave the chemical
business. This option seems reasonable to a surprising
number, including many petrochemical businesses. Second,
chemical companies can focus exclusively on commodities.
This seems a preferred strategy for some private companies, who may be better able to handle the ebb and ow
of a commodity business. It inevitably requires a ruthless minimization of research and dedication to in-house
efciency.
The third strategy open to chemical companies is to
concentrate on speciality chemicals. Such chemicals,
produced in much smaller volumes than is usual for
commodities, typically have much higher added value.
This higher added value means that more research and
higher prots are possible. Unsurprisingly, many chemical
companies are turning their focus to speciality chemicals
or other high added value products.
Interestingly, this new emphasis has not dramatically
changed the skills that companies demand from chemical
engineers, but it has changed the jobs that they do. We
would maintain that the skills base required by chemical
engineers is diverse and remains remarkably unaltered
by the changing nature of the industry. Heat and mass
balances, thermodynamics and transport processes are as
relevant for designing high added value products as for
process optimization.
Although changes in the chemical industry may not
have changed the skills needed, the focus of chemical
companies on specialties has had a major impact on the jobs
which chemical engineers are expected to do. To illustrate
this, we consider the jobs taken by recent graduates with
those taken by graduates twenty ve years ago. Our data
are fragmentary, taken from records of graduates from
Cambridge and Minnesota Universities, and probably
biased towards large corporations, about which our university placement ofces have better records.
The available data indicate major changes. In 1975, three
quarters of chemical engineering graduates went to work
in the commodity chemicals business. The rest were split
between work on products, either design or development,
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AN INTRODUCTION TO CHEMICAL PRODUCT DESIGN

and work in other areas such as consulting or nancial
services.
The distribution of jobs is now completely different.
The largest group of chemical engineering graduates, in
Minnesotas case more than half, now work in productoriented companies. This includes graduates who work on
materials, pharmaceuticals, coatings, adhesives, and speciality chemicals. The number who enter employment in
commodity chemicals has dropped to less than a quarter
of new graduates. The number starting work in consulting
has risen dramatically, as commodity chemical businesses
outsource many of the functions which they used to do in
house. For example, in one case, a commodity chemical
company reduced its process engineering group from 1500
to fewer than 50 persons. This is not a business cycle; this
represents a change in the way in which companies expect
to do business and is why the number of people involved
in consulting has risen.
The emergence of product development as a focus for
chemical engineers implies changes in what chemical
engineers do. This in turn must imply changes in the
appropriate undergraduate curriculum. We have argued that
the knowledge base of traditional chemical engineering
remains highly relevant. We suggest that the appropriate
place for changes is in the teaching of design.
Changes in Responsibility
We have suggested that a new approach to teaching
design to undergraduate chemical engineers is necessary
because our graduates are now moving into a more
product-oriented type of company than they were twenty
years ago.
A second reason that chemical product design should
be taught follows from a major change in corporate organization. The organization of chemical product development has traditionally been functional. Marketing decided
what to make; research discovered how to make it; and
engineering developed the chemical process. Now, product
teams drawn from marketing, research and engineering
work together to develop better products faster. Our new
graduates need to be ready for these broader teams which
decide both what to make and how to make it. In the past,
we chemical engineers could limit our thinking to reaction
engineering and unit operations, waiting for the marketing
division to tell us what chemicals needed to be made,
and in what amounts. Such intellectual isolation is no
longer possible. We must expect to be involved in teams
of marketers, synthetic chemists and operations engineers
in the joint effort of product design and to participate in
the whole enterprise from conception to manufacture.
3 THE CHEMICAL PRODUCT
DESIGN PROCEDURE
Product design is a major topic in subjects such as sales
and marketing, and in other technical professions like
mechanical engineering (Cooper4, Graedel and Allenby5,
Gregory6,7 , Kao and Wiersema 8 , McGrath9 , McMillan10 ,
Pahl and Beitz11, Rosenau et al.12, Whiteld13). Not surprisingly, the schemes for the design procedure vary
widely. Many are complex, especially with respect to the
role of management (Blessing14, Grabowski15, Rude and
Trans IChemE, Vol 78, Part A, January 2000

Grein16). Often they have features specic to the particular

sub-discipline that they represent.
In developing our material, we wanted our teaching to
be independent of case studies of particular products. Case
studies can have considerable value: the design of a high
performance lithium battery can help students understand
product design just as the design of a styrene plant can
teach students about process design. However, students
can learn more effectively if their understanding is in the
context of a broader philosophy, a template for organizing
their thinking.
The product design procedure we propose is a simplication and generalization of schemes used in mechanical
engineering1 . We have chosen a four step design scheme,
centred around the concepts of `needs, `ideas, `selection,
and `manufacture. Similar schemes are said to be used
in such diverse companies as Du Pont, Motorola, and
W. L. Gore.
1. Needs. What needs should the product ll?
2. Ideas. What different products could ll this need?
3. Selection. Which ideas are the most promising?
4. Manufacture. How can we make the product and test it
critically?
In dening `needs, we must dene who our customers
are, a marketing function, and convert their requirements
into quantitative specications, an engineering task. In
generating `ideas to satisfy these needs, it is helpful to
start from the industrial consensus that we will need up
to one hundred ideas to get one successful product. In the
`selection of the best ideas for development, we use both
qualitative matrix screening techniques, another business
idea, and order-of-magnitude calculations, not much more
detailed than typical homework problems, but rmly rooted
in traditional engineering teaching. In `manufacture, we
proceed roughly along the lines of conventional process
design, but often using batch reactors and generic pilot
plant scale separations equipment.
These four steps are the key to the organization of our
approach to chemical product design. Customers needs
include deciding on a standard for comparisona benchmarkand converting qualitatively expressed wishes
into quantitative and scientic specications. The benchmark chosen may be an existing product or an ideal. It
must be as well dened as possible so that specications
are denitive.
The generation of ideas which might meet these needs
is the next step in product design. Normally, we will search
for a large number of such ideas using all reasonable means.
This search may include brainstorming by individuals and
teams, literature and patent searches in similar or related
areas and synthesizing tangent compounds, using methods
such as combinatorial chemistry. Once the numerous ideas
are identied, they must be screened, using both objective
and subjective judgements.
At this point, we should have reduced the large number
of fragmentary ideas for products down to a short list of
the most promising candidates. This reduction might be
about a factor of twenty: if we start with a hundred ideas,
we should have about ve survivors. We must now select
the best one or two for detailed design and development.
If the characteristics of each of the remaining ideas were
directly comparable, this would be easy. They normally

MOGGRIDGE and CUSSLER

are not. For example, we might be sure that one idea will
work well but be expensive; and a competing idea could
be cheap but may not work. Deciding between these ideas
includes the assessment of risk.
Finally, we must build and test prototypes of possible
products, and estimate the costs involved in production. The
focus of these efforts is different from that expected for
commodity chemicals, where we expect dedicated, optimized equipment which operates continuously and the
product is usually well known and understood (for example
in terms of toxicity, ammability, storage lifetime). For
small volume, high value products generic equipment, run
in batch for a series of speciality products is usually more
appropriate. Considerable effort must be expected in testing
the product for safety, reliability, etc.; this is particularly
true in the pharmaceutical industry where mistakes are
catastrophic.
This type of work is different to traditional chemical
engineeringand it is exciting.
Limitations of This Procedure
The four-step procedure outlined above is controversial.
The controversies cluster around three issues: that the procedure is not general, that management and not technology
is the key to successful product development, and that
product design is already part of chemical process design.
Each controversy merits discussion.
The four-step procedure is obviously a major simplication. Many business texts argue that such a procedure is
universally applicable for any product in any industry.
These texts are usually written by business consultants
eager to make money by applying their own procedures to
specic problems. At the same time, many professional
product developers argue that this or any procedure does
not represent the peculiarities of their own industry, that
only those with particular interests can hope to be effective.
To some extent this view must be correctexpertise in a
particular area will be required and unique problems will
exist in each eld of product development. In a way,
however, these product developers are like those who have
denied that correlations of heat transfer could be used for
food products because they were based on measurements
for petrochemicals. Even though differences exist, it is
possible to nd general principles common even to very
diverse elds.
The four-step procedure we have suggested is unquestionably an approximation. Certain techniques introduced
in particular steps can have value at other steps. For
example, risk management may have value in screening
product ideas. Several iterations between stages may also
be necessaryconsiderations of how to manufacture the
product might necessitate a rethink of the selection phase.
Nonetheless, we must start somewhere, and the current
procedure has been for us a sound and creative beginning.
We suggest trying it; any necessary modications quickly
become obvious in specic cases.
An irritating characteristic of most business books on
product design is their emphasis on the central role of
management. The implication is that technology is always
available if only the managers do their job properly (or at
least do what the consultants say). These books on product
design recognize no inconvenient constraints like the

second law of thermodynamics or the meaning of

Avagadros number.
We believe that understanding technology is central to
the design process for chemically-based products. Product
design brings to mind a Sidney Harris cartoon showing
a few managers and an engineer standing in front of a ip
chart. Though the ip chart is covered with equations,
pie charts, and organization charts, the engineer is pointing
to one small box, which says: `then a miracle occurs.
The engineer remarks: `Im having trouble with this part.
Reading books on the management of product design,
we can feel all too much like the engineer in that cartoon.
In our approach, we ensure that technology is carefully
considered throughout the design procedure. This is what
makes chemical product design distinct from related
subjects in business studies or mechanical engineering and
is why it is an appropriate concern for chemical engineers.
The third objection is the assertion that the subject is
already covered as part of the existing study of process
design. This serious assertion is most easily tested by
comparing our template for product design with the
intellectual hierarchy usually suggested for process design.
One successful and powerful hierarchy, suggested by
J. M. Douglas19, is summarized on the left side of Table 2.
After deciding whether a process is best performed in batch
or continuously, one then moves on to producing ow
sheets, which are almost always continuous. The initial
ow sheets centre on the stoichiometrymass and heat
balances. The next level of the hierarchy, which adds the
recycles, often involves a discussion of the chemical reactions. Once these are established, one moves on to the
separation trains and nally to the heat integration. All of
this makes for a good course.
If we want to emphasize product design, we need to
go beyond this hierarchy. We cannot simply substitute a
product for drug delivery for the existing process and carry
out the same kind of procedure. For comparison, the fourstep hierarchy suggested earlier is shown on the right side
of Table 2. After rst identifying a corporate need, ideas
are generated to ll this need. One then decides between
these alternatives and nally a prototype is made and a
method of manufacture identied. The manufacturing
step includes all of the process design hierarchy, although
the level of detail required at this stage in a typical product
design can be expected to be much lower than that needed
in process designbecause the scale of production is
usually much smaller and because prot depends more
on added value than manufacturing efciency.
Thus the important steps of product design anticipate
those of process design. Product design implies a focus
on the initial decisions around the form of the product and
implicitly de-emphasizes its manufacture. This shifts our

Table 2. Process design vs. product design. All of process design is

contained in the last step of product design.
Process Design
1.
2.
3.
4.

Batch vs. Continuous Process

Inputs and Outputs
Reactors and Recycles
Separations and Heat Integration

Product Design
1.
2.
3.
4.

Identify Customer Needs

Generate Ideas to Meet Needs
Select among Ideas
Manufacture

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AN INTRODUCTION TO CHEMICAL PRODUCT DESIGN

efforts away from the common engineering calculations
that have been our bread and butter and requires consideration of subjects that are traditionally left to those directly
concerned with business.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Chemical product design is the procedure by which
customer needs are identied and translated into commercial products. This procedure, which precedes process
design, is especially valuable for speciality chemicals.
Such specialties are an important focus of the present-day
chemical industry, which is evolving beyond the commodities that have been the emphasis in recent decades. We
argue that changes in the chemical industry make a greater
emphasis on product design in chemical engineering
education imperative.
We further argue that it is useful to provide an intellectual
framework in teaching chemical product design, although
this template for design is necessarily a simplication and
will need to be adapted to particular cases. We organize the
product design procedure as four sequential steps. The rst
is the identication of customer needs and the translation
of the needs into product specications. The second step
involves generating and winnowing ideas to ll these needs.
In the third step the best ideas are chosen for commercial
development. The last step requires product prototyping,
decisions on manufacturing route and estimation of economic boundaries. The result is a template for chemical
product design.
Our course has been sufciently successful that it is
now part of the required undergraduate curriculum at the
University of Minnesota and at Cambridge University
and we are producing an accompanying text book. We
recommend that the product design material be taught
after the material on process design, because we feel that
students benet from learning more quantitative process
synthesis before trying to make qualitative decisions concerning products. We suggest that a chemical product
design course should be about one third lectures and two
thirds tutorials or design projects. While the lectures should
be spread throughout the semester, they should be more
frequent at the beginning of the course. Finally, the material
can be used for a short course containing lectures alone,
though we believe that this may be less effective for
inexperienced students of uneven ability.
APPENDIXA Case Study
Designing a Pollution Preventing Ink
A company prints personal cheques with a lithographic
ink containing carcinogenic solvent methylene chloride
(CH2Cl2). Workers at this company also clean the presses
by wetting a shop rag with the same solvent, and scrubbing
down the press. This procedure works well. The trouble is
that much of the methylene chloride evaporates and so risks
damage to worker health and censure from the environmental authorities. Also, the soiled rags have recently been
reclassied as a hazardous waste, so that the cost of their
disposal almost equals the cost of buying the solvent in the
rst place.
The company clearly needs to use a different ink; one
which has less negative environmental impact. Below is a
Trans IChemE, Vol 78, Part A, January 2000

schematic of the design process, based on the template

described above, used to solve this problem. We hope that
this example illustrates both that applying a design template can be a helpful and productive technique and that
the template will need to be adapted to the specic problem
at hand. In this case the identication of needs is pretty
straightforward as is manufacture (it is already known
how to make the ink); emphasis is therefore on the ideas
and selection stages. Other problems will require emphasis elsewhere. It is crucial that the design procedure is
seen as a exible tool, rather than a straightjacket for
creativity.
Needs
Needs will be identied by interviewing the companys
management, workers, environmental consultants and
health and safety administrators. This will give a picture
both of what is required from a perspective within the
company and the external pressures which exist. It may
also be instructive to interview cheque users; this may
lead to some innovative thinking in terms of a completely
new approach to cheque use. The resulting needs statement
might go as follows:
1. keep printing cheques, without loss of quality
2. reduce emissions of chlorinated solvents by at least 95%
3. eliminate exposure of workers to carcinogens.
We can obviously use the existing process as our benchmark.
Ideas
Idea generation will involve consultation with `expert
consultants, literature and patent searches, competitor analysis and most importantly brainstorming within the company. A long list of ideas will result. Many will be
incomplete, there will be plenty of duplication and some
will be plain folly. In most cases it will not at this stage be
entirely clear how each idea will work; for example an
idea may be to use a different (less polluting) solventbut
we dont yet know which one. None of this matters. At this
stage we are interested only in generating as many ideas as
possible, sparking as much creativity and lateral thinking
as we can. It is easy to prune the ideas in subsequent stages,
but missing a good solution might be disastrous.
Having generated a list of ideas, we want to prune and
sort them, removing the plain ridiculous and duplication.
The remaining ideas might be broken into four groups,
as shown below.
Sorted Ideas for a Pollution Preventing Ink
I. Improve Current Printing
A. Change Press
1. Isolate Press
2. Use Laser Printer
3. Use Photocopying
B. Change Cleaning
1. Less Often
2. Solvent-Free Spray, Steam, Air
II. Use a New Solvent
A. Change CH2Cl2 Operation
1. Recycle
(i) Extract
(ii) Spin Dry

10

MOGGRIDGE and CUSSLER

2. Burn
3. Freeze
B. Replace CH2Cl2
1. Non-volatile solvent
2. Oil as Solvent
3. Solvent Mixtures
III. Solvent-Free Ink Chemistry
A. Electrostatic Ink
B. `Solvent which Dissolves Ink
IV. Dont Use Cheques
The rst group in of ideas involves changes in the printing
presses. Because the company does not want to make
the enormous capital investment involved in changing the
presses, this group is deferred until other alternatives are
explored.
The second group involves either containing the solvent
or using a different solvent. These ideas are the easiest
to implement, and hence the most tempting for further
development. The third group of ideas implies the invention
of a new ink, a more major effort than the substitution of a
new solvent, but an attractive solution.
The nal idea, `Dont use Cheques, may initially seem
foolish; but consider the explosion in electronic money
transfers. The company may decide that electronic data
processing which replaces hand-written cheques is like
automobiles which have replaced horse-drawn buggies.
If so, then printing cheques may be like making buggy
whips. Thus this fourth idea should be carefully considered
in the idea screening which is to follow.
A quick screening of the ideas might lead us to choose
IIA1, IIB1, IIIB and IV as the most promising ideas to be
taken forward for further consideration. We are not at this
stage making detailed calculations about how each idea
will work. We are simply comparing each idea with our
specied needs and choosing those which look most
hopeful. We can always come back at a later stage and
look at some more of the ideas, if those we have taken
forward all seem inadequate in some way. At this point we
need to cut down the number of ideas so that it is practical
to analyse them in more detail.
Selection
It is now necessary to put esh on the bones of each of
the ideas we have taken forward from the ideas phase, so
that we can make a rational decision as to which will work
best. All the ideas we have taken forward to this point
should seem attractive each must hold out a good prospect of solving our problem and so detailed analysis will
be necessary to choose between them.
For the purposes of this example, a lithographic ink can
be idealized as containing only four components: a pigment,
an oil, a resin, and a solvent. The pigment, frequently
colloidal carbon, is important to the ink, but not a key in
pollution. The oil is a mixture of natural products like castor
and linseed oils. It typically contains fatty acids with
multiple double bonds, like linoleic acid and linolenic acid.
These double bonds crosslink in the presence of oxygen,
making the ink permanent. The resin is a low molecular
weight, highly polydisperse condensation polymer, made
for this purpose. The solvent, frequently methylene chloride
(CH2Cl2) is used in combination with the resin to adjust
the inks rheology in order to give good printing.

It is fairly clear how recycling the ink (IIA1) will work

it is a straightforward piece of conventional chemical
engineering. It is a good idea and will work well, but
probably will require considerable investment to implement
it. We would prefer to implement a cheaper solution if
possible. The idea of not using cheques (IV) is interesting,
but will take a long time to materialize and is to a great
extent beyond the companys control. We need a fast
solution, as the environment agency are threatening to shut
our operation down. We should keep looking at this idea
and may ultimately decide to get out of the cheque printing
business as a consequence, but we need a more immediate
solution too.
We are therefore most interested in either using a new
solvent or in developing a solvent-free ink. We need details
of how these ideas will work, so that we can select the best
one, or reject both in favour of solvent recycling.
To nd a new solvent, we can make use of the theory of
the thermodynamics of mixtures, in particular Hildebrand
solubility parameters. Chemicals with similar solubility
parameters dissolve well in each other. We know that
methylene chloride is a good solvent for our ink. If we can
nd an alternative chemical with a similar solubility parameter, then it too is likely to be a good solvent. Methylene
chloride has a solubility parameter of 9.8 (cal/cm3)1/2.
Inexpensive solvents with similar solubility parameters
are benzene, toluene, and napthalene. These are three
possible choices as alternative solvents. All are carcinogens,
though perhaps less dangerous than methylene chloride.
Benzene is excessively carcinogenic, and napthalene is
solid at the temperatures normally used for printing. Thus
we choose toluene as a substitute for methylene. This is a
conservative choice: the toluene is still toxic and will still
generate emissions, but the modied ink should still work
well. This idea is unlikely to be a long term solution
toluene is eventually likely to be banned too, but it might
be a good stop-gap measure whilst we look for an alternative solution.
To explore developing a solvent-free ink, we begin by
asking what parts of the ink we can change. We could alter
the pigments surface chemistry, but this would probably
have little effect. We cannot change the natural oil much.
Our best chance is the resin.
Changes in the resin could provide the desired product.
First, we can synthesize the resin so that it has a lower
average molecular weight and a broader molecular weight
distribution. With some experimental work, we may get
a resin whose rheology is such that distribution with a
solvent is unnecessary. This would eliminate vapour
emissions during printing and hence one of the sources
of pollution.
We might also consider making the ink water washable.
During printing, the ink must be hydrophobic. To also be
water washable, we need some sort of chemical trigger,
which we activate after printing is over, to clean the
presses. One such trigger would depend on a resin with
pendant carboxylic groups (-COOH). Such a resin would
normally be hydrophobic. However, if the ink were washed
not with water but with dilute aqueous base, these groups
would ionize and the resin would become considerably
more hydrophilic. If there were enough pendant carboxyl
groups, the ink could become its own emulsifying agent,
and be washed off the presses with aqueous base. A resin
Trans IChemE, Vol 78, Part A, January 2000

AN INTRODUCTION TO CHEMICAL PRODUCT DESIGN

with pendant carboxylic acid groups is a riskier choice,
but offers hope of a permanent solution.
The selection stage leads us to carry forward the ideas
of solvent substituion (as a temporary measure to keep us
printing) and changing the resin chemistry as a longer
term solution. We might also want to keep the idea of
not printing cheques at all on the back-burner in terms
of company strategy.
Manufacture
We have now identied our solution(s) we have to put
them into operation. This involves a full product specication and details of how manufacture will occur. In this
example this stage is pretty straightforward; after all we
already know how to manufacture the ink. It is particularly
simple for the solvent substitution. All that is required
is some quick experiments to conrm that toluene is an
adequate substitute and to determine how much should be
used in the ink formulation to ensure good rheology.
There is considerably more work to be done in changing the resin chemistry. This is a more innovative idea
and as such much more needs to be done in order to get
the idea to work. We need to identify a suitable resin
formulation, test its performance both for printing and
washing and then decide on a manufacturing route. Whilst
this may take a long time and be a labour intensive and
creative procedure, the path is clear and lies within the
bounds of conventional process engineering. We now
know what we want to make, we just need to decide how
to make it. This is where chemical product design merges
into process engineering.

3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.

11

delivering products with controlled microstructure to customers,

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ADDRESS

REFERENCES

Correspondence concerning this paper should be addressed to

Dr G. D. Moggridge, Department of Chemical Engineering, University
of Cambridge, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3RA, UK. (E-mail:
gdm14@cus.cam.ac.uk).

1. Ulrich, K. T. and Eppinger, S. D., Product Design and Development,

(McGraw-Hill, New York) ISBN 0-07-065811-0.
2. Edwards, M. F., 1998, The importance of chemical engineering in

The manuscript was received 17 September 1999 and accepted for

publication after revision 19 November 1999.

Trans IChemE, Vol 78, Part A, January 2000