Pilot Plant and Scale-up Studies

Who Should Attend
Engineers and scientists who are involved with process development, process translation, scale-up and pilot plant studies will benefit from this course. This includes those in:

  • Pilot plant operations 
  • Specialty chemical production
  • Food processing 
  • Chemical reactor design
  • Waste processing 
  • Pharmaceutical production
  • Process and project design 
  • Composite material manufacturing
  • Biotechnology and fermentation

Description
This course will provide concepts, methods and advice on how to scale-up or translate a process or model to larger sizes. Emphasis throughout the course will be on proper designs, modeling and processing. The importance of the process geometry will be emphasized.

The course will cover the different scale-up methods and how to establish viable process objectives. A general scale-up method is presented and a number of examples are worked as illustrations. Scale-up traps and pitfalls are reviewed as well as ways to avoid these. The importance of process objectives will be emphasized. Basic concepts of importance are reviewed using different areas as examples. Power analysis will be presented as a useful tool in scale-up. Examples will show how to use the power analysis in applications and to establish the controlling mechanisms. Detailed suggestions for pilot studies will be given. Scale-up in the mixing and contacting area is reviewed. Equipment, operating conditions, optimum designs and processing conditions will be discussed. Methods to perform process translation in mixing will be developed and examined as to their practicality. Correlations and data use will be reviewed for process accuracy and use in pilot studies. Pitfalls and the use of analogies in solving processing problems will be discussed.