How Can Pilot Plants Help When Scaling Production?

A pilot plant is defined as a small pre-commercial production system that is operated to find out the capability and behaviour of a process prior to employing it on a large industrial scale. When scaling a new process, there’s a lot of money at stake.

Even on the successful development of reaction data and theoretical models detailing every facet of the process, employment of a lab scale process directly to a commercial plant puts the company as well as its investors at risk. The use of pilot plants have been proven to be an efficient solution for addressing the challenges when it comes to scaling production.

In this blog, we discuss the ways in which a pilot plant aids in scaling production. Continue to read till the end to find out now.

Delivers essential process data collection

Pilot plants are equipped with several sampling points and instrumentation that help users to gather accurate process data throughout the entirety of the process. Professionals can utilise these data to refine and precisely foresee the information for an upcoming production-scale process system. The information collected are -

• Product purity
• Estimation of refined yield
• Recycle stream effects
• Process waste

Enables to manufacture usable product

If there is a requirement to get the products into the market urgently then a pilot plant is capable of delivering adequate quantities of usable product. The product from the pilot plant can be used for determining process viability and return on investment for investors.

You can also share the samples with the consumers to create a customer base or may even start selling the product outright. It is totally up to the company how it chooses to use the product from the pilot plant.

The main advantage that a pilot plant provides is that it gives companies the flexibility to bring products into the market rapidly and safely.

Allows testing of commercial-grade equipment and materials

One of the challenges when it comes to large-scale production is that the high purity raw materials are not so affordable even when purchased in mass. Making some adjustments to the quality of materials is the most likely option and this can have a drastic influence on the process.

Moreover, the commercial-grade equipment behaves differently and in the majority of cases needs different construction materials than the lab equipment when it was first tested. Complete testing of how these alterations shall affect the process is vital for the successful accomplishment of the process scale-up project.

The use of a pilot plant allows testing of these changes on a pilot scale which will help in avoiding costly miscalculations on a production scale while at the same time reaping the benefits of a reasonable level of production.

If you are interested to learn more about the pilot plant systems then make sure to get in touch with an expert supplier that deals with it.