Pilot plant facility

There is a redundancy of flexibility in the design of FCC catalysts. Variation in the amount and type of zeolite, as well as the type of active matrix, provide a great deal of catalyst options that the refiner can employ to fit its needs. For smaller refiners, it may not be practical to employ pilot plant facilities to evaluate different catalysts. In this case, the above methodology can still be used with emphasis shifted toward using the MAT data to compare the candidate catalysts. It is important that MAT data are properly corrected for temperatu. soaking time, and catalyst strippability effects. 

ICI has also developed a PU recycling process for all MDI flexible PU foam slabstock. With their parmer Vergier, they have established a UK 1 million pilot plant facility, aiming to move to commercial scale 5,000 tpa operation in 3 to 5 years after 1998. However, no information is available at this stage on plant at a commercial scale (131). 

As such, an asymmetric synthesis of tarantabant had been demonstrated centered around a DKR as the key step to set both stereocenters in a single catalytic step. The synthesis proceeded in six steps and 40% yield from the ketone rac-13. This route was found to be robust and reliable and generated in excess of 70 kg of API in various campaigns from both preparative laboratories and pilot plant facilities, and provided support for the project through longer term toxicology and clinical studies [13]. 

You have been asked to design a small pilot plant facility for the production of cyclohexane using some combination of existing tubular reactors. The reactor descriptions are as follows ... 

Company A is a major pharmaceutical manufacturer with worldwide operations. The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) staff visited a site with both pilot-plant facilities and pharmaceutical manufacturing operations. The company is continually developing new and innovative chemistry, which results in frequent changes in the chemicals handled and manufacturing techniques used. 

Company D is a large pharmaceutical manufacturer with worldwide operations. CSB staff visited a pilot-plant facility and thermal hazards laboratory. Pilot-plant operations included the use of several batch chemical reactors. Like Company A, this company also frequently changes chemicals handled and manufacturing techniques. 

In its first two years, CPRR also constructed and began operating what is potentially a commercial-scale pilot plant facility. To be able to reduce the applied research to practice in a timely manner," says Morrow, "we realized that we had to have a process development and demonstration facility that was significantly larger than you would ordinarily expect to find at a university, or even in industry." He adds that this has allowed them to move along faster toward a commercially viable design. 

This chapter deals with the design of a pilot plant facility. Although this chapter discusses many aspects of pilot plant scale-up considerations, it is not meant as a treatise on process scale-up. Many other authors in this book discuss this subject more thoroughly. All discussions on process scale-up in this chapter are presented to serve as examples of the thought process that must be considered when engaged in the design of a facility. 

As already described, there are a variety of reasons for the manufacture of batches in the pilot plant facility. First, the batch may be manufacture as a development batch. In other words, it could be the first attempt at manufacturing a product. This type of experimental manufacturing could be the result of a design of experiments analysis. These experiments are usually carried out at very small sizes, possibly 1 kg or less. However, many of these batches could be made as part of one experiment. For these batches it is important that the equipment can easily be used for many runs in as little time as possible. It is also important that manpower requirements remain as low as possible for manufacturing these small-scale batches as well as for the cleaning the equipment. 

It is planned to construct a laboratory scale decomposition reactor based on the proposed reactor concept within the next 3-5 years. If the test results are positive then the reactor concept will be used to design a reactor system for the proposed HyS pilot plant facility that will be used to demonstrate the technology and to obtain scale-up data for the design of a commercial plant. 

Equipment. The special equipment which may need to be hired and its cost listed. Consideration should be given to the need to use pilot plant facilities or large scale testing facilities. 

After development of a new process scheme at laboratory scale, construction and operation of pilot-plant facilities to confirm scale-up information often require two or three years. An additional two to three years is commonly required for final design, fabrication of special equipment, and construction of the plant. Tims, projections of raw material costs and availability five to ten years into the future become important in adopting any new process significantly different from the current technology. 

As pilot plant facilities and operations become more complex and technically diverse, the need for support groups, such as engineering, maintenance, and calibration, becomes critical to perform planned activities in a cGMP-compliant manner. 

A second important constraint on the number of projects that can be carried out is the availability of critical resources. Companies with small engineering staffs will be able to carry out only a few projects at one time. Even if extensive use is made of Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contractors, the owners will still need to provide some engineering support to each project. The availability of EPC contractors can also be an issue during times of peak industry construction. Projects that require extensive research and development work may be delayed because of constraints on the availability of researchers and pilot plant facilities. 

The fluorination of U Og and UO with fluorine gas has been studied in pilot plant facilities at Argonne National Laboratories (11), the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant (12), and by Russian investigators (13). 

Phillips, S.G. Skid-mounted pilot-plant facilities. Chem. Eng. Prog. 1990, 15. 

McClosky, R.J. Choosing the right process control system for a general purpose pilot plant facility. AIChE Meeting, Nov 1986. 

Nearly every supplier of evaporation equipment and systems maintains a pilot plant facility where, for a fee, different evaporation schemes can be set up. Data obtained from several days of testing on small laboratory or pilot plant units can be good predictors of evaporator performance, and these data are very helpful in the scaling-up calculations for production-sized installations. Samplers obtained from the test work can be used to check the mass balances, concentrations, and product quality. Serious operational problems like foaming, plugging, and fouling can occur in even short pilot plant tests and can point to the need for alternative evaporator types or modified designs. 

The cationic nickel complex [ /3-allylNi(PR3)]+, already described by Wilke etal. [21], as an efficient catalyst precursor for alkene dimerization when dissolved in chlorinated organic solvents. It proved to be very active in acidic chloroaluminate ionic liquids. In spite of the strong potential Lewis acidity of the medium, a similar phosphine effect is observed. Biphasic regioselective dimerization of propylene into 2,3-dimethylbutenes can then be achieved in chloroaluminates. However, there is a competition for the phosphine between the soft nickel complex and the hard aluminum chloride coming from the dissociation of polynuclear chloroaluminate anions. Aromatic hydrocarbons, when added to the system, can act as competitive bases thus preventing the de-coordination of phosphine ligand from the nickel complex [22 b]. Performed in a continuous way, in IFP pilot plant facilities, dimerization of propene and/or butenes with this biphasic system (Difasol process) compares... 

Internal skills in the environmental engineering field and the applicable regulatory milieu for the pilot plant facility, as well as ready access to the appropriate site or corporate functions. 

The second step in the direct ethanol process is that of enzyme production. The Gulf process utilizes a mutant strain of Trichoderma reesei, grown continuously to produce a complete cellulase system. The residence time is 48 hours. Enzyme production begins on a spore plate with subsequent scale-up to the enzyme production vessel size to be used. Our pilot plant facility has 300-gal enzyme reactors. 

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