ASPECTS ON PILOT PLANT RESEARCH

By
Eric Burström

DG Jones said 1967: ”Utilisation of Pilot Plants should strongly be avoided!”

This was of course based on his experience that it can be very costly to builds and run Pilot
Plants.
On the other hand I use to say: “Don’t make the mistakes yourself, let us make them for you!”

Running tests in big scale is of course costly but are sometimes necessary and highly
motivated.

I have been involved in Pilot Plant research during more than 20 years at MEFOS and was
employed as a project leader of fantastic project which in fact had gone on for several years at
MEFOS. This project had all the characteristics of a dream project for a young metallurgist:

- A client with a lot of money

- A project to develop something completely new
- Test campaigns in large scale
- An ambition from the client to test every complex part of the process and at the same
time
- Great flexibility to change the test program during operation
- Avoidance of in depth analysis of what happened

We were running around the clock in weekly campaigns with four teams of 12 people, control
room operators, el- and instrumentation engineers, mechanics, and operators for tapping and
young researcher as shift leaders. The client also had their crew with experienced
metallurgists, computer people, designers and a whole bunch of other specialists.
Metal and slag was flowing, at least sometimes, we had blockages in the off gas channel, the
slimes were overflowing and plugging the pipes and it looked as the whole Luleå river was
overflowing the red hot furnace.
After every shift we, the shift leaders, met and described what had happened and every time
we had a new astounding theory about how this process really worked.
I think I have never learnt so much as during this period even though I had 10 years of
industrial experience before I started at MEFOS.

What I really want to say is that you learn a lot from pilot plant research and even more so if
you plan it right and make thorough analyses of your tests.

A lot has changed during these 20 years. Clients are more aware of costs, the rich companies
seem scarce or at least not ready to take big risks and we today have excellent measuring
devices and computer modelling facilities that enables to find out process conditions without
making plot plant tests.

We have global competition and today’s owners of companies are not like our Duke Mr de
Geer who used to own a small steel plant in the middle of Sweden. This is more than ten
years ago when he restarted the plant and among other things he invested in a small EAF: One