Scalability and scientific due diligence

Excerpt

It was L. H. Baekeland who, in his 1916 Perkin Medal address to the Society of Chemical Industry in New York, said ‘Commit your blunders on the small scale and make your profits on the large scale’. While he said this in the context of developing industrial chemical processes, its wider significance lies in the obvious but also possibly under-appreciated point, viz. the measure of success (whatever this might be) in any multi-step activity relies on the product of this measure for each individual step and not the sum. Also implicit in Baekeland’s dictum is the importance of appreciating and anticipating scaling issues in technological development. While these are bread and butter matters for engineers, technologists and chemical companies engaged in such development, this is less true for academic chemists and others not directly involved in, or responsible for, the development process. Furthermore, when applied to global questions relating to systems for more sustainable energy, fuel and chemicals production, the issues of scale (and scalability) become even more complex and their wider appreciation yet more critical. …