Team 16: The Chemies It’s not easy being green Dave JankeMike Hall Briley LambertLaura Hamilton

Outline  Project Overview  Design Decisions  Issues & Obstacles  Our Design  Conclusions  Acknowledgments  Questions

Project Overview  Design a pilot plant to produce poly(  - hydroxybutyrate), a biodegradable polymer.

Why Choose PHB?  Unique  Timely  Interesting Chemistry

Our Design - PFD

Design Decisions  Agitated Bubble Tank Reactor

Design Decisions  Membrane Separator  Remove first catalyst

Design Decisions  Static mixer/PFR  Reduce costs  Improve heat transfer

Issues & Obstacles  Lack of property data  Overcome by: Estimation techniques  Residence time in the reactor  Overcome by: Using bubble tank design  Reactor sizing: Gas hold up & mixing  Overcome by: Research  Cost of catalyst #2  Overcome by: Creative chemistry  Overcome by: Creative chemistry

Our Design - PFD

Our Design – P&ID

Our Design – Layout

Our Design - Economics  Not directly cost competitive with polypropylene  Similar in cost to some other bioplastics  Knowledge gained from pilot plant should drive price down

Conclusions  In real life, you never have all the data!  Scheduling & teamwork are vital  New, innovative processes are interesting, but very difficult to design  Our process has potential, but is not currently viable

Acknowledgments  Dr. Geoffrey Coates, Cornell  Charles E. Bell  Prof. Aubrey Sykes  Prof. Jeremy VanAntwerp

Questions?