The Road to Commercialization: Best Practices

The Road to Process Commercialization: Best Practices[/caption] Experts share their best practices in process commercialization Every day, scientists and engineers in the chemical process industries (CPI) work on innovative ideas, seeking the ones that can be turned into successful commercial products and processes. Many factors help determine which innovations progress beyond research and development (R&D) into production, and relatively few make it that far. The technologies that were awarded the 2017 winning and honoree Kirkpatrick Awards (pp. 22–28) are outstanding examples of processes that have been successfully commercialized. We have asked the experts behind these success stories to share their best practices for process commercialization with our readers. A compilation of their responses follows.   The early stages In the initial stages of laboratory and pilot plant development, several areas were identified as being key considerations: 1) technical feasibility; 2) economics; and 3) a well-defined understanding of the end users’ needs (Figure 1). Figure 1. The groundwork for technical feasibility, economics and goal definition is laid in the early stages of development[/caption] Technical feasibility.…