General Philosophy of Pilot Plants
J. W. PAYNE
S o r o y - V ~ c u u mlrrbomfori... Poulrboro, N. J
.
P reaaona;
ILOT plants are built and operated for a number *of valid
among thea are (1) to explore the &e& of ohang-
ing operating conditions, catalysts, charge stocks, etc., in existing
commercial units; (2) to investigate such things BB materials of
7- construction, catalyst life and recycle operations; (3)to develop
uew processes; and (4) to convince top management that a new
process or propeal is sound.
Basically the only defensible reaeon for a pilot plant is to reduce
the chances of making expensive mistakes in large scale equip-
ment.
Many of the following remarks have to do with pilot plants and
pro- relating to the petroleum industry. This industry is
c h a r a o t e k d by large scale operations, and a new process is often
installed in a great many &ezies. Therefore, in this industry
thorough pilot plant development is usually a good investment.
Pilot Planl Studies Cover Many Phases of
Product Development and Control
Vafipbles in Edstiag Commercial Units. I n the operation
of wmmercial units, it is often desirable to know the effect of
changing the operating variables, catalyst, charge stock, or some
other factor &ecting the performance of the unit.
A pilot plant for these studies can usually be very small and
very simple and may not have any r6mmblanOe to a commercial
unit. After proper wrrelation with wmmercial operations, a
reactor containing 100 cc. of catslyst is of ample size to do the
exploratory work for the largest commeroial petroleum catalytic
crackingunits.
Materials of Construction, Recycle Operations, and Catalyst
Life. A pilot plaut for thk type investigation usually should be
somewhat more elaborate. Considering, first, materials of wn-
struction, shorbterm intensive tests can often be uaed to narrow
the field to a relatively few economically suitable materiul~.
However, a pilot plant may be justified to investigate materials
* under actual long-tern operating conditions, particularly where
catalytio operations are involved. Our laboratory once worked
on an aqueous phase catalytic prooeas for converting sulfur diox-
ide to sulfuric acid. The bench scale work was done with d i s
tilled water and in glaesware. A pilot plant WBB built out of
t stoneware, using lead-lined pumps. When the pilot plant was
started, no reaction twk place. A tadious investigation showed
that about the only things that did not p h the catalyst and
stop the rawtion were glasswsre and distilled water.
For determinhg catalyst life, accelerated tests can be devel-
oped that give a good indication of performance, but there is no
substitute for pilot plant operation under expected commercial
oparating conditions. Many people have developed wonderful
catalysts that passad all the terrtsexcept this last one. Ifthe ex-
haustive pilot plant test is Bkipped, there is considerable risk that
the wmmercial process will have to be abandoned or a new ca&
lyst developed.
For recycle operation, whether it is a new process or the in-
duction of recycle in an exkting proceas, only the foolhardy
proceed without a pilot plant run. Recycle can completely upset
an otherwise good proce~s. Either a catalyst is poisoned, by-
1,621
products acnnoulate in the recycle, or some other undesirable
effect develops; all these should be caught in a pilot plant rather
than in a commercial unit.
Development of New Processes. This is the activity in which
most people think of pilot plants. I n reality, many new processee
can be engineered without the uea of a pilot plant. During World
War 11, many wmmercinl plants for new pro- were built
without benefit of norinsl pilot plant developments. Immedi-
ately afterward there was a rash of b o h n g at technical meetings
that these plants operated a t 150 to 250% of design capscity.
This demonstrates that operable plants for new processes can he
designed with but little pilot plant data, but it 8180 demomtzata
that unless pilot plant data are available, the enginem are likely
to build the plants twice as large as needed.
In many instancea the pilot plant only demonatrata that some
thingis wrong with the wntemplated wmmercial design that care-
ful thinking on the part of the engineer should have anticipated.
On the other hand, a pilot plant does not almys reveal di6icultiea
that may be encountered in the wmmercial plant. We eu-
countered such au instance in the manufacture of bead cracking
catalyst. One operation involved holding the hydmpl beads for
2 to 3 days in rather deep wash t a h . I n the commercial plant
it was found that the beads would not flow freely from the bot
tom of the tanks at the end of the wasb period. During the wash
period the hydrogel beada had undergone a semipermanent de-
formation at the points of contact with other beads and bad
locked themselves into a rigid maw. It WBB neoesssry to put
open-work decks in the tanks to s u p p r t the beada and prevent
deformation. The support gives to the beads by the walls of the
small pilot plant tanks was enough to prevent deformation.
To Convium Management That a Hew Proposal or ProcessIo
Sound. The fourth reawn for building a pilot plant ia to con-
vince top mansgemeut that a new proceas is mund. Nothing
helps so much in Selling a new p r o c e ~to management as the fact
that a pilot plant having all the critical features of the propoBsd
wmmercial unit has operated successfully. Top brasa under-
stands this sort of argument.
Process Characteristics Dictate Scale M MI%-'
A pilot plant ,&odd be built when it is eatsblished that this in
the ba& metkcd, based on time and eo&, for obtaining the addi-
tional information needed to properly deaign a commercid
plant. The wrreet auswer as to &e can usually be resohed by a
proper analysis of the characteristics of the process. In many
tsrpee of proceeees either no pilot plant or a very small one is all
that is r e q u i d , because the w w m can be calculated; whereea
in other type+ the larger the pilot plant the better, with the
h a 1 answer coming from progressive siaea up to a full scale
wmmercial unit.
For exsmple a hot gaa is to be used to heat a bed of
%?D%%%odd
howu through a tower. The depth of a%
be the same as that of t6e contemvlated wm-
merchl unit in order to obtain the correct flow velocity, heat
trannfer coe6icients. and wntact timed: but by maldng the t o w e
adiabatic the diameter need be only h c i e n t to permit unre-
 1622 I N D U S T R I A L A N D E N G I N E E R I N G CHEMISTRY
stricted flow of solid particles-Le., 5 t o 10 particle diameters.
In this instance if the gas should start to flow more rapidly
through one side of the tower than the other, the fast-flowing gas
will not be cooled as quickly by the solids. Therefore, it will have
a higher viscosity and a greater resistance to flow and will be
self-correcting for uniform flow. If the process is reversed and
the hot solids are cooled by means of a cold gas, any nonuniform-
ity of gas flow aggravates itself because the more rapid flow of gas
through one vertical section will develop a cool path through which
abnormally large quantities of gas will flow. For the latter type
of operations, the diameter of the pilot plant should be as near
commercial size as possible.
In a process in which a bed of granular solids is heated or cooled
by means of a li uid, the conclusions would be reversed because
the viscosity of t i e li uid decreases with increasing temperature,
the cooling step wou18 be self-correcting, and heating would give
nonuniform flow.
A parallel case can be drawn for a granular solid extraction
process with a liquid flow rate sufficiently low that pressure drop
is negligible. If the solvent becomes more dense as it flows
through the bed the solvent automatically seeks uniformity of
density at all points at any given level in the extractor. A down-
flow of solvent will give uniform flow, and a very small diameter
pilot plant reactor is sufficient. If an upward flow of solvent is
used in this operation, the denser solvent at the higher level in
the extractor attempts to return to the bottom, and internal re-
cycling and mixing result, particularly in large diameter vessels,
and pilot plant data cannot be extrapolated.
Suppose we have a process in which heats of reaction are in-
volved. An example would be a reaction in a fixed bed of catalyst.
The magnitude of the heat effects should be estimated, and a
probable commercial design should be calculated. A pilot plant
with an adiabatic shell need encompass only one representative
full-length element of the commercial design. The pilot plant
may indicate the necessity of more or less heat transfer surface,
but when the final surface-volume relationship is established,
the diameter can be expanded to commercial size without the
necessity of building a larger pilot plant.
Most of these examples illustrate types of processes in which
one phase does not adversely affect the physical movement of a
second phase that is involved in the process. In such processes
the equipment can usually be arranged so that either there is posi-
tive control of movement or random nonuniformity is self-
correcting. In these processes a full-height, small-diameter, adi-
abatic-shell pilot plant is sufficient.
There are also many processes in which one phase adversely
influences the movement of a second phase. Examples of this
type are contact of liquid with liquid as in solvent extraction, gas
An Approach to Pilot Plant Studies
J. B. MAERKER AND J. W. SCHALL
Houdry Process Corp., Marcus Hook, Pa.
T HE great strides which have been made in the chemical and
petroleum industries today and which are continuing a t a
rapid pace are the result of new and improved processing methods.
These changes are brought about by demands for new products,
upgrading of existing products, and improving yields and quality
of existing products. I n addition, the motivation for improving
existing processing methods in many cases is the necessity for de-
Vol. 45, No. 8
with liquid as in fractional distillation, gas with solids as in fluid-
ized catalytic cracking, or liquid with solid as in contact decolor-
ization. In such processes countercurrent operation cannot
be obtained directly, so we must either be content with one con-
tact, often at a low degree of effectiveness, or resort to stage opera-
tion in which the phases are contacted, separated, and recontacted
in a countercurrent sequence, as in a bubble tray fractionation
tower or in many of the well-known liquid-liquid solvent ex-
traction processes.
Most of these latter processes give good countercurrent oper-
ation in small diameter vessels (up to a few inches) but as vessel
diameter gets larger the results get poorer, and we begin to add
internals to direct flow. What we should realize is that a mate-
rial flowing through a vessel likes to follow the easiest path, and
two phases never flow countercurrently if both have freedom of
movement; they start internal cycling or by-passing each other.
If it is decided that stage contact, separation, and recontact
will be practiced commercially, then a small pilot plant is ample.
But if for economic reasons it is desirable to build a commercial
unit in which random flow will take place, then the bigger the
pilot plant the better, because only a full commercial size will
give the final answer.
Enough examples have been given to illustrate types of proc-
esses that require only a small pilot plant and also those for which
a pilot plant can only indicate how the next larger should be built.
There is one fairly common fallacy regarding pilot plants:
this is that the pilot plant vessels should have the shape of the
proposed commercial unit. The fact that a commercial vessel,
for design reasons, might have a diameter one half its height
should have no influence whatever in establishing the shape of
the pilot plant vessels. The pilot plant vessels should be de-
signed to duplicate commercial velocities, heat transfer coef-
ficient, contact (residence) times, and heating or cooling surface
distribution. This does not imply that the size and shape of a
commercial vessel has no effect on the type of contact obtainable.
In processes in which there is random movement and in which
one phase adversely affects the uniform flow of another phase,
the size and shape of a commercial vessel are very important, and
the nearest approach to countercurrent cortact or uniform con-
tact can be obtained with tall thin vessels. However, a pilot plant
with the same shape factor must sacrifice either flow velocity,
transfer coefficients, contact time, or other critical factors, which
invalidate the data for use in commercial design.
In summary, it is usually good economy to build pilot plants;
and for developing a new process, a careful study of process
characteristics will reveal the size that should be built.
RECEIVED
for review April 15, 1953. .iCCIPTED M a y 21, 1953.
creasing new plant investment and operating costs. Economic
pressure forces reliable proof of the feasibility of new or improved
processes and processing methods. This proof is one of the
principal functions of the pilot plant.
There are many misconceptions of the role of pilot plant studies
in the development of new or improved processes. Pilot plant
studies are carried out to obtain the necessary product yield and