Evaluation of Competing Process Concepts for the Production of Pure Enantiomers

Abstract

Various promising concepts exist for improving the performance of productions of pure enantiomers. An efficient approach is developed for the systematic conceptual design of such processes. The proposed three-step procedure aids a fast selection of the optimal process configuration out of many possible candidates and leads to an optimally designed process. The approach is applied in a case study for an industrially relevant compound, considering different process concepts based on simulated moving bed chromatography, enantioselective crystallization, and racemization. It is demonstrated that mixed-integer nonlinear programming is capable of predicting simultaneously the optimal process configuration and optimal design parameters.