Pilot test runs

Selection of Equipment If a new product is being considered, the preliminaiy study must be highly detailed. Laboratory or pilot-plant work must be done to establish the controhing factors. The problem is then to select and instaU equipment which 1 operate for quantity production at minimum overall cost. Most equipment vendors have pilot equipment available on a rental basis or can conduct test runs in their own customer-demonstration facilities. 

Continuous pilot-plant test runs are generally recommended to verify the laboratory results and to estabhsh criteria for plant design. Facihties for these runs are available at a number of minerals-processing research centers. 

Much of the experience and data from wastewater treatment has been gained from municipal treatment plants. Industrial liquid wastes are similar to wastewater but differ in significant ways. Thus, typical design parameters and standards developed for municipal wastewater operations must not be blindly utilized for industrial wastewater. It is best to run laboratory and small pilot tests with the specific industrial wastewater as part of the design process. It is most important to understand the temporal variations in industrial wastewater strength, flow, and waste components and their effect on the performance of various treatment processes. Industry personnel in an effort to reduce cost often neglect laboratory and pilot studies and depend on waste characteristics from similar plants. This strategy often results in failure, delay, and increased costs. Careful studies on the actual waste at a plant site cannot be overemphasized. 

One method that can be used to enhance the efficiency of technology transfer presents itself when a client has a laboratory or pilot plant producing the materials. When this is so, the toller s personnel can visit the site, observe the processing and ask questions of the research and development team. Conversely, the research and development team or chemists and engineers from the client can witness any test runs taking place at the toller s plant. These options allow both companies to ask questions, give advice on process and... 

NOTE To develop reasonably good data for scale-up to full plant design, it is important to have the operation of the pilot column system as near as possible to the anticipated plant conditions. The most critical factors, flow rate and feed impurity concentration, must be constant for the entire test run. 

Follow the example of Reference [32], using scale-up rules. A pilot plant test run has been conducted using a laboratory equipped test vessel. Design equivalent process results for a 10,000 gallon tank are ... 

This paper demonstrates the technical feasibility of a plastics energy recovery plant using circulating fluidised bed technology from Ahlstrom of Finland. Full details are given of a two-phase test run conducted at Ahlstrom s pilot plant in Karhula, in order to obtain information on the process behaviour when combusting different types of plastics waste. Results are presented and conclusions drawn. 

The pilot trial was segmented into three different test runs. Test 1 full-flow pressurization without chemical treatment. Test 2 full-flow pressurization with chemical treatment. Test 3 recycle flow pressurization with chemical treatment. Testing was limited to 4 days (a total of 22 operational hours). Table 27.3 summarizes the experimental conditions of the three test series. 

There will be some differences and it is a quantitative question, whether or not they can be tolerated or not. For a final decision, test runs in a pilot plant should be carried out with freshly frozen product and such which has been resting for 5 h before drying. These tests are recommended because the methods mentioned above use different sized samples in different configuration than are used in the production. The amount of product and its geometrical dimension will also influence the structure as well as the number of crystallization nuclei in the product, which can be very different in a normal laboratory and in a clean production area. 

The RC1 is an automated laboratory batch/semi-batch reactor for calorimetric studies which has proven precision. The calorimetric principle used and the physical design of the system are sound. The application of the RC1 extends from process safety assessments including calorimetric measurements, to chemical research, to process development, and to optimization. The ability of the RC1 to generate accurate and reproducible data under simulated plant scale operating conditions may result in considerably reduced testing time and fewer small scale pilot plant runs. 

All of the test runs at higher current densities in the pilot cells have been completed, or are presently ongoing, for just two months or so, the idea being to focus on the properties or the performance of the electrolyser and the membrane. The durability of... 

Several test runs have been carried out using 1.5 dm2 laboratory cells with the F-8934 at 8kA m-2. The current efficiency at 8kA m-2 was about 1% lower than that at 5kAnT2, and no further decline was observed. F-8934 has also had a similar evaluation result in full-scale pilot cells at 8 kA m-2. AGC has been obtaining slightly lower current efficiencies than its desired target of 97% at the beginning of the membrane lifetime. This has led AGC to ensure that the other stepped-up design concept should be applied to the membrane for 8 kA m-2 operation. 

Can the software be run off-line, to allow piloting/testing of models before deployment ... 

Catalyst batches were activated under two different activation conditions H2/CO (with 3% Ar) = 2.6 3.87 xmol/s (FT synthesis reaction mixture with H2/CO = 0.7) for 2 h at (1) 523 K and (2) 543 K. These conditions are based on temperatures and gases used by PETC to activate these catalysts for testing prior to a large scale pilot plant run. After activation, reactions were carried out over the catalyst samples in the same reactor tube at 523 K with H2/CO = 0.7 and a total gas flow rate of 6.47 pmol/s (with Ar as internal standard) at a pressure of 83.8 kPa (normal atmospheric pressure in Albuquerque). Two sets of samples were made, one for each of the two activation conditions. Each set consisted of three samples after activation, activation followed by FT reaction for 10 h, and activation followed by FT reaction for 45 h. In the case of the activation at 523 K, the first 2 h of the run were considered the activation step. Therefore, the activation in this case was at 523 K. For activation at 543 K, the catalyst bed was cooled to 523 K in the syngas mixture of activation. 

A second pilot test has been performed by Pyropower, Inc., in preparation for construction of a 52 MW, 468,000 lb/hr circulating bed FBC in Niagara Falls, NY, for United Development Group.5 Design is for the plant to burn up to 20 percent TDF, wire-free.5 The pilot test was run on a 0.6 MW plant using from 16 to 50 percent TDF, wire-in, on a weight basis.5 The test experienced problems with uneven tire feed and wire accumulation at ash discharge points. 

At this stage, a tentative selection of at least two alternative size enlargement methods can be made. These initial selections can then be refined with the help of laboratory and/or pilot plant tests. Most vendors (see Appendix, p. 177) have pilot equipment available on a rental basis and are prepared to assist with test runs and technical advice. A final process selection can then be made taking into account the normal considerations of reliability, flexibility, ease of maintenance and minimum overall cost at the required throughput. 

This first run with ICR 106 catalyst was shut down at 2000 hr on stream when a plug consisting of iron and arsenic deposits from the shale oil developed in the preheat section of the reactor. (In this first test, a guard bed to remove these metals was not provided.) To prepare sufficient feedstock for downstream processing studies, a larger-scale, 3500-hr pilot plant run was made with 650 mL of ICR 106 catalyst-. 

The hydrotreated base naphtha contained less than 0.5 ppm sulfur. The naphthas were dried over molecular sieve and stored under an inert gas (Ar) prior to use in the pilot unit. Using Karl-Fischer analysis the water content of the dried naphthas was measured to be 5-8 wt ppm. In order to compensate for the effect of the remaining water on the chloride content of the catalyst, 0.8 wt ppm chloride as 1,1,2-trichloroethane was added to the naphthas. Hj (99.995%, Norsk Hydro), supplied from gas cylinders, was passed over a deoxo catalyst (BASF R3-11) at 70°C and a 4A molecular sieve to remove traces of oxygen and water, respectively. The deoxo catalyst as well as the molecular sieve were regenerated between each test run. 

The ACR technology has been investigated extensively during the past four years through a series of research and development programs. Six major test facilities have been operated at Carbide s Technical Center in South Charleston, WV, and at Kureha s facilities in Nishiki, Japan. These tests led to an extended pilot-plant run demonstrating all of the key elements of the process including acid gas removal. 

What is the state of the technical knowledge Were tests run in a full-scale plant Pilot plant Bench scale Computer simulation only ... 

Emulsion Pipeline Operations. Prediction of pipeline pressure gradients is required for operation of any pipeline system. Pressure gradients for a transport emulsion flowing in commercial-size pipelines may be estimated via standard techniques because chemically stabilized emulsions exhibit rheological behavior that is nearly Newtonian. The emulsion viscosity must be known to implement these methods. The best way to determine emulsion viscosity for an application is to prepare an emulsion batch conforming to planned specifications and directly measure the pipe viscosity in a pipe loop of at least 1-in. inside diameter. Care must be taken to use the same brine composition, surfactant concentration, droplet size distribution, brine-crude-oil ratio, and temperature as are expected in the field application. In practice, a pilot-plant run may not be feasible, or there may be some disparity between pipe-loop test conditions and anticipated commercial pipeline conditions. In these cases, adjustments may be applied to the best available viscosity data using adjustment factors described later to compensate for disparities in operating parameters between the measurement conditions and the pipeline conditions. 

Biomass CFBG will be studied in a pilot scale plant. Several test runs will be carried out with orujillo and wood waste as a fuel. The main objectives of these tests being to investigate the effects of the equivalence ratio, temperature and fluidisation velocity on the gas production rate from biomass CFBG, and to evaluate the quality of the producer gas as measured by the composition and higher heating value. Process variables to be analyzed are ... 

The results of two catalyst life tests, one in a laboratory autoclave and the other in the pilot plant (Run E-3), are shown in Rg. 1. Both tests were conducted with the same catalyst at a total pressure of 5.27 MPa. (750 psig.) and a temperature of 523X The catalyst concentration was 15 wt.% In the laboratory autoclave and 25 wt. % in the pilot plant the gas hourly space velocities were 5000 and 10,000 liter/kg.(cat.),hr., respectively. Rg. 1 is a plot of a normalized rate constant, k /k (0, versus the time onstream. The normalized rate constant was formed by dividing the rate constant at any time, k, by the rate constant at the beginning of the experiment. k (0). The correspondence between the two sets of data is reasonably good, suggesting that catalyst deactivation is a time-dependent phenomenon that behaves simileu ly in the two reactor systems. 

A pilot PTA can he used to determine the effects of various water loading rates, air flow rates, packing type, and packing material on removal efficiency and/or on the operation of the unit. A schematic of a typical pilot column is illustrated in Fig. 6. Using 8 to 12 column runs, various combinations of design factors can be evaluated. In order to achieve steady conditions, a test run will typically be operated for about 30 min, after which influent and effluent sampling can commence. 

The microactivity test (MAT) based on the ASTM-D-3907 [11] standard was used to determine activity and product selectivity of catalysts. MAT runs were performed in a X)Uel automated equipment with 4.0 g of catalyst using the same VGO as in the pilot plant runs. Unless otherwise specified catalyst samples were previously calcined at 853 K for three hours. Operating conditions were 793 K, CTO ratio of 4, 75 s injection time and WHSV of 15.7 h. Product analysis and conversion and selectivity calculations were done as in the pilot plant. The relative error of data was 5%. We analyzed coke bum products in-situ by IR analysis using an HORIBA VIA-510 analyzer. Product distribution was expressed in terms of produet yield/ activity ratio as defined in Table 2 as currently used for interpreting MAT numbers in equilibrium catalysts. 

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