Pilot tests, design data from

Design of an air sparging system requires a balanced airflow to maintain effectiveness and control of the migration of fluids and vapors. Because of the potential for loss of control, an air sparge system should not be designed or installed without a field pilot test. Design data from pilot tests include ... 

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. 

Pilot-scale treatability studies are enlargements of bench-scale tests, which more closely approach the full-scale project. The objective of pilot-scale tests is to verify treatability outside of a laboratory setting and verify the actual field conditions. Many pilot-scale studies are performed at the actual project site. Data from pilot-scale studies are used to design full-scale field operations. A pilot test may include the following ... 

Many licensors and contractors who must obtain data from which to design and build solvent extraction plants utilize large, elaborate pilot plants which simulate commercial plant conditions. Many refiners have constructed such plants to obtain data from which to guide commercial equipment and prepare samples for engine test evaluations. Plants of this sort cost 200 to 300 daily to operate. An evaluation of a single stock may require weeks and cost thousands of dollars. 

These models use experimental data from drying kinetics tests in a laboratory, pilot-plant or full-scale dryer, and are thus more accurate and reliable than methods based only on estimated drying kinetics. They treat the dryer as a complete unit, with drying rates and air velocities averaged over the dryer volume, except that, if desired, the dryer can be subdivided into a small number of sections. These methods are used for layer dryers (tray, oven, horizontal-flow band, and vertical-flow plate types) and for a simple estimate of fluidized-bed dryer performance. For batch dryers, they can be used for scale-up by refining the scoping design calculation. 

The final data the designer hopes for are pilot plant data from tests he has conducted. It is here that the designer determines what level of supersaturationthe solution can support, the crystal surface area required for desupersaturation, the effect of secondary nucleation, and the residence time required for growth to desired size. Some of these values are measured directly while others are implied by indirect measurements. 

The industrial operating unit has corroborated the experimental data obtained through both laboratory and pilot tests. This specially designed system operates with zero supplemental fuel consumption when used sand that contains more than 1% of organic compounds. Besides sand reclamation, gas-flowing solids-fixed bed concept may be used for the other applications such as heat recovery from ashes, from hot dirty gases, etc. 

The theoretical models caimot predict flux rates. Plant-design parameters must be obtained from laboratory testing, pilot-plant data, or in the case of estabhshed apphcations, performance of operating plants. 

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