Industry leaders believe that PI would typically provide the following benefits:

1. a reduction in capital cost by 60%,

2. a 99% reduction in impurity amount in the final product, resulting in a significantly more valuable product,

3. a 70+% reduction in energy usage and hence considerable reduction in operating cost,

4. a 93% first-time yield (per pass yield), leading to reduction in downstream processing and less material to recycle back to the reactor,

5. a 99% reduction in reactor volume, leading to inherently safer operation, reduced capital cost, and also less storage of inventory.

Delphi is a forecasting technique based on answers to questionnaires. The technique is widely used to facilitate formation of a group judgment without permitting interaction and biasing that normally happen during a group discussion. It is a method for achieving a structured anonymous interaction between selected experts by means of a questionnaire and feedback. Delphi is commonly used

1. for creative exploration of ideas,

2. to collect suitable information for decision making,

3. to identify factors influencing the future state of process intensification's development,

4. to develop the time scale of differing aspects of the technology's realized potential.

A Delphi study conducted in 2002 focused on identifying the potential opportunities for Process Intensification Technologies (Nikoleris et al., 2002). The questionnaire was sent to a preselected group of experts in order to obtain individual responses to the problems posed. The Delphi studies came up with important findings with respect to PI, and those findings are listed here:

1. Lower energy use in the...