text: Rather than one large central plant, that has to be fed a large amount of feedstock, such as a refinery that can unload a tanker shipment of petroleum if located next to an ocean, the discipline of process miniaturization envisions the distribution of the process technology to areas where the feedstock is not readily transportable in large quantities to a large centralized processing plant.  The miniaturized process technology may simply involve transformation of solid biomass materials from multiple distributed microprocesses into more easily manageable fluids.  The fluids can then be transported or distributed to larger-scale intelligent processing nodes using conventional fluid transport technology.
  Historically, small processes or microprocesses per se have always existed.  For example, small vineyards and breweries have produced feedstock, processed it, and stored product in what could be considered “microprocess” when compared to processes designed based on the petrochemical industry model or, for example, large-scale production of beer.  Small villages in India and other places in the world have learned to produce biogas from animal manure in what could be considered small-scale microprocesses for the production of energy.  However, microprocesses and process miniaturization as a design philosophy includes the notion of approaching total automation, and is a new technology which has been enabled by computer hardware miniaturization, for example, the microprocessor.  It is easy to envision processes which can be mass-produced and transported.  For example, many appliances such as air conditioners, domestic washing machines, and refrigerators could be considered microprocesses.
  The design philosophy of process miniaturization envisions that “scale-down” of complex processes involving multiple process unit operations can be achieved, and that economy of scale will be more related to the size of a network of distributed autonomous microprocesses.   Since failure of one autonomous microprocess does not cause shutdown of the entire network, microprocesses will lead to more economically efficient, robust, and stable production of products that have traditionally been produced for a petroleum-based society.
  Since fossil fuels by definition are being consumed and are non-renewable, future fuel and materials will be based on renewable biomass.