Chemical Product Design

Chemical products depend for their function on a chemical or a chemical transformation. They are usually of high value, and manufactured in relatively low volumes, which means that the focus in designing chemical products is on speed rather than cost. In designing a new chemical product, the starting point is to define a desired function, rather than a chemical specification; thus chemical product design inevitably encompasses deciding what to make as well as the process by which it will be made. These characteristics of chemical product design result in process design heuristics rarely being appropriate. To replace these, we propose a four step procedure as a template around which to organize ideas for designing chemical products. Keywords: product; design; process; manufacture