All demonstration plants have similar goals and key design factors, similar to pilot plants. Demonstration plant suppliers should use your process goals to balance these design factors and design your custom module. Common design goals for pilot plant services include:
- Validate testing data, either from a lab test or a pilot plant test
- Prove that a new technology or chemical formulation can be successfully produced by commercial equipment
- Produce product in large enough amounts to attract investors, show business viability, or test in a market
- Create a permanent, flexible process system that can be used to bring multiple formulations or technologies to a commercial market test
- Gather additional data on process parameters at a larger operating capacity
- Demonstrate a clear path to return on investment (ROI) for producing the end product
- Optimize a process or automate a low-volume production
The design factors that have to be balanced for successful scale-up include:
- Non-linear process design
- Reaction Kinetics
- Chemical equilibrium
- Material interactions
- Fluid dynamics
- Thermodynamics
- Agitation methods
- Equipment selection
These factors can be modeled and tested through software and studies by experienced pilot plant engineering firms like EPIC. We use the following to design demonstrations plants and generate material balances, operating parameters and physical system design:
- Chemical similitude studies
- Mathematical modeling
- 3D modeling & process modeling (Aspen/HYSYS modeling)
- Finite Elemental Analysis (FEA)
- Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
