Technology Providers
You’re Kidding….Use Outside Process Services?
One of the cornerstone principles of PROCESS has been our desire to provide premium chemical engineering services to as many types of clients as possible. One of these market groups is Licensed Process Technology Developers or Licensed Technology Providers who sell their know how, and often times specialized equipment, to plant operating companies. Such technology is almost always patented and provides the operating company with an opportunity to realize better yields or other processing advantages not achievable otherwise. In many cases, such technology may be the best available and was achieved by years of research and development (R&D) efforts. PROCESS recognizes that the ideas, know how, process information, equipment details, and key operating data are the entire foundation upon which such companies are built. It takes enormous trust for such companies to share such information with process experts outside of the company. That is why PROCESS vowed from the very beginning never to become a technology provider so that companies will feel secure in using our services to help them provide better technology. By not becoming a technology or equipment provider, PROCESS also ensures that we remain totally independent and unbiased to the benefit of our plant clients.
Because of our company’s business strategy, technology provider clients have the opportunity of utilizing an independent group of world-class chemical engineers with complete peace of mind.
How We Can Help
One of the ways PROCESS can help technology providers is by helping optimize their process offering. While we don’t have any R&D facilities to offer, our engineers have a broad range of process operations, process design, and process optimization experience that can often help uncover those hidden opportunities to make a good process even better.
Another way PROCESS can help is by providing thorough and efficient balance of plant and integration design services to the ultimate client who purchases a licensed technology. This engineering support is often seen as a distraction to technology providers and, if performed incorrectly, can lead to unhappy clients. By using PROCESS as an independent 3rd party for these functions, technology providers can have confidence that the job will be done correctly without having to rely on the client to source this effort to an unknown group. An additional benefit is having a reliable ‘on call’ group without having to maintain an expensive internal staff to perform such work.
PROCESS can also aid in the front end marketing by offering an independent 3rd party process validation study to the ultimate client. This helps your client know that they are getting good technology that is the right fit for their processing goals before making a significant investment. PROCESS has performed such studies as a single stand alone technology evaluation or by way of comparison of multiple process technology options. Beware – PROCESS has to actually believe your technology is right for the client’s application before we will recommend it!
Regardless of the size of your technology company (large or small start up), PROCESS is able and willing to assist, and you can be assured your proprietary information is safe with us.
Start-up Companies
We Take Pride in Helping the Little Guy
PROCESS is a small flexible company uniquely structured for providing services to small new venture start up companies. We believe that even a small entrepreneur should expect a premier level of engineering service and that’s what PROCESS provides. In today’s world of ever tighter regulations and stiff competition for every new idea, PROCESS salutes those who still dare to pursue a dream and we take pride in supporting them as their process engineering partner. We view the opportunity to help advance a potentially important new process development as great fun. This is one reason we keep our rates affordable and we have no minimum project size restrictions.
Here are a few of the development phases where PROCESS can assist start up clients:
- High level process technology review (feasibility study) to make sure a proposed process idea is feasible and does not violate physical and thermodynamic laws
- Provide a screening study to help narrow down the best possible process options to work along side your developed technology for a particular application
- Provide the necessary balance of plant design around a particular technology or equipment
- Provide process engineering consulting to help developers build in proven processing concepts for an efficient and reliable process or equipment design
- Create a flexible process simulation that validates the process and acts as a repository for all critical process information
- Provide independent engineering validation commentary along with associated engineering documents (PFDs, H&MBs, etc.) to convince investors that a process is real and viable…or not
- Spreadsheet simulation tools that allow someone not trained in process simulation to make changes to process parameters such as feed composition, rates, etc. and view the results. These tools can also provide economic analysis numbers such as operating costs, energy usage, ROI, and more
- Provide pilot test plans and pilot testing oversight
- Help estimate key physical property information that may not be known
- Provide process engineering support when courting clients and investors
- Provide process designs for scaling up your process from lab to pilot, pilot to demonstration, and demonstration to commercial size.
Critical First Steps
We see it over and over again; an inventor develops a process at his own expense and then tries to sell the idea to potential investors to raise the capital necessary to further develop and commercialize the idea. Investors are skeptical and want to see ‘proof’ that the process idea is both valid and makes economic sense. PROCESS can help by providing a qualified 3rd party evaluation that ferrets out the hidden technical and economic issues that may present problems down the road. It is much better to find these out early before taking investor money without having performed thorough process due diligence investigation. Our report findings and engineering documentation (simulation, PFDs, mass & energy balance, etc.) help secure needed funding from investors and gives you peace of mind moving forward.
PROCESS can provide preliminary process design packages, preliminary Heat & Mass Balances, preliminary equipment design packages, and any number of front-end related services. These preliminary designs, depending on the process complexity and scope, are typically completed in 2-4 weeks and are well worth the minimal investment at this early stage.
Because we have worked on a broad range of projects for many years across many different markets, PROCESS can rapidly respond to your unique needs with quality information and reliable front-end design packages.
Seeing Your Technology Implemented
Forming a trusted relationship with PROCESS early in the development process puts you in a position to confidently recommend a capable process engineering partner for your clients and investors down the road when it comes time to see your developments implemented in a commercial setting.
PROCESS can first help the client identify and evaluate such technologies and then provide the ‘balance of plant’ process design to effectively integrate the new technology into a customer’s existing operations. In other words, we can help you help your client implement your new process technology into their existing plant or new plant plans. This often includes modifications to an existing facility’s utilities systems and adaptations to to the technology package that take into account specific conditions at a particular location. Utilizing PROCESS for this purpose helps ensure an effective startup and minimizes plant down time.
