From the Lab  to the Plant

Who are the visionaries driving our company forward? Process engineer Roberta Montana, for one. She works for the LAB business unit at the production facility in Latina, Italy. Last year, she and her team succeeded in using a catalyst tested by the Global Process Development team in Elmira, Canada, in their plant. Doing so accelerated the production processes and enabled the plant to produce larger quantities of the end product Naugalube® 438 L. In this interview, Montana explains why the transition from the lab to the plant is not quite as easy as you might think.

Mrs. Montana, what are the difficulties involved in transferring a successful laboratory test to a large-scale plant?
Roberta Montana: It’s pretty tricky. We knew from the start that the new catalyst for the end product Naugalube® 438 L was more active because we had tested it in our plant in 2023. But we wanted to know whether it performs just as well as the old one at such high production volumes. This is something you should know in advance when producing an order worth millions – you don’t want to take any risks. The catalyst met these criteria. We were initially satisfied with this result. But we hadn’t yet fully exploited the new catalyst’s potential. This is because its increased activity shortened the process time. To take advantage of this, we would have had to completely overhaul our entire process. Which we didn’t do, because the process was already running smoothly and delivered a high-quality product – and there was less demand back in 2023.

Why did you end up doing it after all a little later?
We had to produce such large quantities that we really needed to save time. Numerous recipe adjustments were necessary throughout the entire process in order to exploit the full potential. In this context, you need to keep in mind that it wouldn’t help to just make one step faster. We’re dealing with chemical processes here that are all interdependent. Speeding up a single subprocess may not have any effect on the total time it takes to complete the entire process. All of the steps of the production process have to remain in sync.

Can you explain that in more detail?
Our process essentially consists of three main steps: In the first step, the aromatic amine is alkylated with tripropylene, i.e., the chemical reaction between the amine and tripropylene is set in motion using a catalyst. In the second step, we need to remove the catalyst. We do this by filtering it out. In the third step, the excess tripropylene is distilled off.

In order to fully leverage the potential of the accelerated reaction in the first step, we also had to optimize the other steps.

How did you do that?
We scrutinized everything within the individual process steps to determine what is actually necessary and what we can shorten and/or parallelize. At the same time, we couldn’t afford to interrupt production last year to conduct tests or make modifications. We had to ensure that we continued to produce a product that met the specifications. Meeting the customer’s requirements was the top priority. That’s why we integrated our process improvement ideas into ongoing production as gradually and precisely as possible. Every change was carefully planned and its effects closely monitored. This involved a great deal of effort, including for our colleagues in quality control.

So, was it worth it?
Absolutely – in the end, we were able to produce a much larger quantity in high quality, although it did take a while under the circumstances to find the ideal new formulation for peak productivity. The approach was very incremental.

It would be beyond the scope of this interview to detail every single step we took. But here are a few examples: With our system being highly automated, each modification required new programming and fine-tuning. Steps that were previously programmed sequentially needed to be reconfigured to run in parallel. We couldn’t have done it without the support of the process control team.
In addition, we reduced the duration of certain filtration steps and even eliminated a few altogether. As a result, throughput increased significantly, but this ended up impacting the maintenance requirements of a central filtration system. Another challenge was that the new catalyst operated differently than the old one. The filtration system had to be serviced more often, which could have meant losing hours of crucial production time. But in this case as well, the maintenance team quickly found a way to streamline the process. And in distillation, we were able to skip the cooling step, saving valuable time.

Was there ever a point when you thought, “This just isn’t going to work”?
Sure, moments like that always come up. But in the end, it works out after all. We also faced a bottleneck at the loading station for the tank trucks that transport our product to the customer. Our high production output couldn’t be processed quickly enough. In the worst-case scenario, a full product tank means production has to stop entirely. This meant that we had to quickly bring a second, already existing filling station online.

And lastly, we also had to ensure that the necessary raw materials were available on site in sufficient quantities. Given the conditions in 2024, this was an immense effort for the supply chain team. But in the end, everything worked out well – a testament to the dedication of everyone involved. That was a great feeling for all of us. And the effort to keep improving our processes is ongoing.

Roberta Montana
is a chemical engineer and has been with LANXESS in Latina since 2019. She was in charge of overseeing the catalyst’s implementation: “It was an exciting process because at first, we didn’t know if it would work. But we proved that we could do it.”