Design Philosophy

SN2's research experience combined with practical plant engineering gives us a unique advantage in process design. When we examine the research chemistry for the process, we simultaneously develop an appreciation for the major contributing costs of the process at scale. This approach avoids technologies that may be novel and interesting but nevertheless are uneconomic at scale.

Our aim is to achieve global economic optimum cost-effectiveness and optimal return on investment. This is best done by considering the major factors and constraints that typically include:

• Quality of the research basis of the process
• Technical feasibility and process robustness
• Safety risk and environmental concerns
• Capital costs
• Running costs
• Energy consumption
• "Greenness" and sustainability
• Waste disposal and by-products
• Patent and licence positions
• Skill base for plant operation
• Optimisability and opportunities for innovation
• Government regulations
• Competition

All of these factors need to be "viable" for a project to be a successful money-maker. A bad mark on just one can be problematic.

SN2 performs both research and feasibility studies on new processes that show quickly the costs and benefits of the new enterprise. Frequently such analysis will lead to examination of alternatives and depending on the case, useful innovations can emerge.

As appropriate, we can do process-development test runs in our high-performance continuous-flow plant. Such runs give a model of the chemical reaction kinetics and allow process mechanisms to be better understood and optimised. Because the SN2 plant is continuous, it simulates the full-scale process that much better and scale-up tends to go more smoothly. New and potentially valuable intellectual property (IP) can arise from such applied research.

On the basis of these process-development test runs, SN2 can design and build pilot or small-scale plant that can be added to an existing process.