The world first calculator was consisted of 17,000 vacuum tubes and huge in size. But now, a laptop computer is much smaller and superior in performance due to the invention of IC in place of vacuum tubes. The micro chemical chips which integrate the functions of chemical operations on microchips have enabled chemical instruments and chemical plants to be miniaturized. For this purpose, we have brought the same concept of IC into the chemical instruments. In place of resistor, capacitor, and diode in IC, mixing, extraction, phase separation, and other unit operation of chemical processes are integrated onto a glass or plastic microchips (Figure 1). These unit operations in a microchip are named as micro unit operations, MUO. These MUO can be combined each others so freely, and a chemical process can be constructed like a electronic circuit (Figure 2). This micro chemical systems is named as continuous flow chemical processing, CFCP.
Design standardization of unit operations for reducing the capital intensity and cost of small‐scale chemical processes
