Scaling-Up Enabling the Full Potential of Industrial Applications of Ultrasound and Hydrodynamic Cavitation

Abstract

Nowadays, the requirement for process intensification in the chemical industry no longer only meets the economic considerations but also at the necessity to anchoring the industrial production in a sustainable approach, cleaner and more energy efficient technology. As we have seen in previous chapters, the phenomenon of cavitation, whether of hydrodynamic or ultrasonic origin, is likely to generate beneficial effects recognized as conducive for scale-up operations. Technically, the extrapolation of laboratory experiments on an industrial scale consists in taking into account the numerous constraints related to the production of large quantities of materials (impurities of the raw materials, duration of process, reliability, etc.) in large reactors. Thus, the development of a production line requires the realization of a pilot unit that will solve the problems encountered during the climb to scale-up. These miniaturized replicas have variable production capacities ranging from kilogram to several tens of kilograms and can be carried out in a research unit. Therefore, many laboratories have been engaged in this way for a few years and the number of publications on pilot units, whether dedicated to ultrasonic or hydrodynamic processes, has considerably increased these last years. This chapter is meant to be didactic and is not the object of a detailed development of cavitation phenomenon scaling operations. In this sense, he is interested in the basic considerations of cavitation phenomena on the industrial scale through some reminders and representative examples.