Distributed production: Scale-up vs experience

Concepts such as process intensification, distributed manufacturing, and modularity are becoming mainstream as the chemical industry has to meet the demand for growth while concurrently facing sustainable development challenges. To meet economies of scales, modularity appeals to the concept of numbering up (scaling down and then scaling out). As numbering up becomes more common and a necessity, investors look at solid financial predictors to reduce the uncertainty around the fate of their assets. Traditional economic models that either scale up or scale down the investment for a plant size with a power law (exponent α) of a reference unit at a given capacity (Q) and its investment (I) are valid for the several identical plants and their components. When it comes to scaling down and then numbering up, the investment, or rather price of a modular plant the exponent relating price and capacity is β = 1/n − 1. We report a case study to scale down a 1000 barrel/day (bbl/day) micro-refinery gas-to-liquid unit to convert wasted natural gas to Fischer-Tropsch fuels. The investment for 100 units 100 times smaller approaches the cost of the same production capacity given by a single 1000 bbl/day unit costing $1 million. © 2020 American Institute of Chemical Engineers