Nice! On the other end of the scale I was able to visit the BASF combined chemical plant once, and it is mind-blowing how many pipes there are feeding various chemicals from one reactor to another. They start from naphtha, water and liquefied air and synthesize basically everything else on-site.
In another life I would be a process engineer for a career. Turning batch processes into continuous ones for a living.
In a class I once took, I remember coming across a continuous-flow process for the synthesis of Ibuprofen. It was truly a thing of beauty.
Edit; found it: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201409093
3 minutes, start to finish. 8 grams per hour.
Nice! On the other end of the scale I was able to visit the BASF combined chemical plant once, and it is mind-blowing how many pipes there are feeding various chemicals from one reactor to another. They start from naphtha, water and liquefied air and synthesize basically everything else on-site.