The company sought ways to increase troughput of a biosynthetic processing system. The technical services department had identified new operating parameters for chromatographic separation colums that were thought to increase troughput of the system by 2,37 times the current mode of operation. The proposed changes were tested in a simulation model to gain confidence before committing to retrofit. The whole processing system including feed tanks upstream and collection tanks downstream of the colums and the utility systems were modelled. Complex operation rules were modelled as well. The simulation run revealed that the process troughput actually went down by 35% instead of being 2,37 times the base case troughput. The reason was that the cleaning in place (CIP) system become a bottleneck. Investment into a new cleaning system would double the initial investment but increase troughput only by 14%. Therefore alternative ways were researched. Simulation studies identified a change in the way of operation that increased troughput by 6% (without investments). That was implemented and gains were achieved consistently over the past 2 years. More information http://www.bptech.com/papers/PSE2000/paper.pdf
Soft Benefits
The simulation study prevented planned retrofits that would have lead to decreased troughput. The study revealed opportunities to incrase troughput with little capital investments. The increase of the batch size in crystallization step was found favorable and the proposed change was confirmed by experiments. Simulation showed that increasing repacking frequency would lead to modest economic gains however this was not implemented due uncertainity of availability and reliability of the packing material.
Public quantitative benefits
The output was increased by 6% with modest capital investments.
