Chemical industries must in the near future change their general basic raw materials from fossil carbon sources to renewables according to political decisions in most of the world. This is following concern over the use of raw materials that increase the concentration of green house gases like CO2 in the atmosphere. This calls for a new inventory of raw materials and extensive changes in the manufacturing process of many common chemicals. Chemical Product Design is a systematic procedure for inventing new ways of making chemical products and, in this chapter, we shall go through a number of cases where a radical new way of concepting chemicals and manufacturing processes is exemplified.

We have in the previous chapters identified different types of the raw materials and products that can ensure a transformation from a petroleum-based to a bio-based society. We have discussed how raw materials can be converted to the required end-products. Before we end up with the final purified product, we still need a number of separation and purification steps. We need to select proper separation methods to reduce the cost of the process and ensure the required quality of our product. In this chapter, we will define the key parameters that are necessary to know to identify the relevant processes. This includes feed concentration, particle characteristics, and solvent properties. The chapter will introduce the existing methods for product purification and introduce guidelines for the selection of the best technologies for the separation and purification processes.

A central part at biorefinery plants is the conversion of raw materials to the product of interest. The conversion process can be chemical or biological. The chemical conversion will be explained in this chapter and the biological conversion in Chapter 9. The basic principle for the chemical reaction process will be explained, including catalytic reactions, reaction kinetics, and mass transport