Engineers and scientists require specialized skills and face many challenges when scaling batch laboratory results to the design and operation of a continuous pilot plant.  Materials handling, solid-liquid separations, stream recycling, and waste streams need to be addressed in the pilot plant before the demonstration and commercial plants are built.  However, many of these issues are either briefly investigated or completely ignored during the laboratory development program.  Ignoring these potential problems can result in disappointing process performance from the pilot plant, due to mechanical and operating difficulties, significantly increasing the schedule and cost of the piloting step.

Based on over 40 years experience at Hazen Research in designing and operating pilot plants for the energy, mining, and environmental fields, the authors will discuss a number of areas that can present problems when scaling a process from the laboratory to the pilot plant.  Many problems encountered in pilot operations from other chemical-related industries have direct application to both biochemical and thermochemical process scale-up.  Several examples of piloting problems that can be overcome with proper design and planning will be presented in this talk.  With knowledge of what potential problems may be encountered in the pilot plant, the engineer can develop a pilot plant design that reduces mechanical and operating difficulties, allowing the development team to focus on demonstrating the process and providing design criteria for a feasibility engineering study.