Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews edited by
The Pilot Plant Real Book: A Unique
Handbook for the Chemical Process Industry
by Francis X. McConville
FXM Engineering and Design, Worchester, MA 2002. 313
pp. ISBN 0972176918 (spiral bound) $89.95
reviewed by Mike Wilson
In the early months of my first job in industry, the re-
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search director sent me out to Building 10 in the manufac-
turing plant. “See if you can help them out. It’s a real mess”
he said. Only a few minutes in Building 10 was needed to
prove that I was not prepared for this at all. If I had had a
Downloaded via 80.195.8.165 on September 15, 2023 at 06:51:02 (UTC).
copy of this book at hand, I might have made a contribu-
tion to solving the problems. Alas, no deal! I venture that
the “Real” in the unusual name for this book comes from
“get real”, a phrase that I heard not a few times in my early
adventures in the plant and pilot plant environment.
This book is intended to help people who scale-up
chemical processes and does what The Chemist’s Companion
(1) did for the lab chemists. The book is divided into eleven
sections, each section taking up topics that engineers and
chemists need to handle in the plant.
The first section enumerates the key factors that have to
be planned for in preparing for scale-up work. Much good
advice for the bench chemist is found here, as differences be-
tween lab and pilot plant are emphasized. This is essential
study for the budding process chemist and chemical engineer,
as each can learn where the perspective of the other.
The succeeding ten sections take up specific topics such
as solvents, heat transfer, and gases, just to name a few. These
1260 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 80 No. 11 November 2003 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
Jeffrey Kovac
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-1600
sections contain tables of relevant data; there are more than
200 of these, often supplemented with well-developed ex-
amples of how to use them. This is a great service to scale-up
planners since a large number of essential sources is consoli-
dated here. There is also a first-rate index.
The Pilot Plant Real Book is obviously intended for in-
tensive use: it is printed on heavy paper, and the spiral-bound
format allows the book to lie flat on the desk. The format is
at once a strength and a weakness: the spiral binding may
not take the wear and tear that this book will experience.
Since errors in books can cause considerable problems,
it is gratifying that a Web site (http://www.pprbook.com) is
available to help keep one’s copy up-to-date. Errata are al-
ready posted there, and there is a button to report newly
found errors. The site also has a few templates that can give
the user a jump start for using the book as a planning tool.
If these Web pages are kept current and expanded, then this
book will be valuable, indeed.
The The Pilot Plant Real Book will not find a place in
the chemistry classroom, but every scale-up professional will
want to start an on-the-job education with a copy. At the mod-
est cost, it is hard to see why not.
Literature Cited
1. Gordon, Arnold J.; Ford, Richard A. The Chemist’s Compan-
ion; John Wiley & Sons: New York, 1972.
Mike Wilson is in the Department of Chemistry, Temple
University, Philadelphia, PA 19122 and is also president of Wil-
son Technologies, Ltd., a firm consulting in process chemistry;
michael.wilson@temple.edu.