Process Research and Development

Process Research and Development work in organic chemicals spans a wide spectrum of industries - from pharmaceuticals to petrochemicals. Process Research is done essentially by organic chemists. It involves developing better, cost-effective, environment-friendly and safe processes for molecules that come out of discovery research. Process Development involves optimizing chemical processes so that they are robust, repeatable and reproducible. This is essential to ensure problem-free scaling up from lab scale to pilot scale and then to commercial scale. This activity is the domain of chemical engineers. Though the functions of the chemists and chemical engineers seem distinct, in reality chemists and chemical engineers need to work in tandem. This section will include sites that are related to any aspect of Process research and process development. This will include various techniques used for process optimization - such as Design of Experiments, tools for creative process development - such as TRIZ, and other such areas.