Overview

Pilot plants are intermediate in scale between the laboratory bench and the full-scale plant. They are used for a variety of purposes, essentially to obtain information on process design and operation and on products, including information relevant to safety. Some hazards are liable to show up first at the pilot plant stage and the pilot plant is therefore an important tool for hazard identification, as described in Chapter 8. Here consideration is given to the more general aspects of pilot plants and particularly to their characteristic features and hazards, and to safety in pilot plants.

Accounts of pilot plants are given in Pilot Plants, Models and Scale-Up Methods in Chemical Engineering by Johnstone and Thring (1957), The Chemical Plant from Process Selection to Commercial Operation by Landau (1967), Chemical Process Development by D.G. Jordan (1968) and Pilot Plant Design, Construction and Operation by Palluzzi (1992) and by Constan (1984), Carr (1988), Dore (1988), Palluzzi (1989, 1990, 1991), Lesins and Moritz (1991), J. Jones et al. (1993a,b) and Lo and Oakes (1993). Safety is treated in the Pilot Plant Safety Manual by the AIChE (1972/33) and by Kohlbrand (1985), Siminski (1987), Carr (1988), Dore (1988), Capraro and Strickland (1989), Carson and Mumford (1989 LPB 89, 90), Constan, Herman and Moeller (1992) and Palluzzi (1992).

A number of authors on pilot plants give checklists, often as tables. These checklists include the following: justification for use (J. Jones et al., 1993b); overall programme (Lesins and...