Chemical Engineering February 2013 - 55

Engineering Practice
has abundant experience in designing
and commissioning similar pilotplant
processes. For example, do not
hire a pilot plant contractor who has
designed only fixed bed reactors to
design fluidized bed reactors
* Let the design team work under the
same roof with a pilot plant fabricator
in order to be able to respond to
unplanned design and fabrication
issues without delays
* Make as small and simple a pilot
plant as is practical for scaleup
purposes. For example, some companies
build their pilot plants using
simple tubing as lines and large-diameter
pipes as vessels, which are
then supported by nuts and bolts on
vertical grating walls. Instruments
are connected by tube fittings, thus
simplifying the construction and
allowing easy assembly and disassembly.
Multi-tubular reactors are
typically scaled up from only a single
" show tube " representing actual
operating conditions of thousands
of tubes in the commercial reactor
Pilot-plant process validation. It
is important to clearly identify and
communicate pilot-plant testing objectives
to the project team to eliminate
repeated and unnecessary work.
To speed up this step, it is desirable
to educate pilot plant operators well
in advance on the commissioning and
testing plan, as well as continue to
involve product developers (researchers)
in process troubleshooting and
important decisions during the pilotplant
testing program.
Commercial process development
and basic design (scaleup from
pilot to commercial plants). This
step can be accelerated considerably
if the pilot plant has been scaled
down properly to collect valid necessary
data for scaleup and if there
have been no major changes to the
conceptualized commercial process
design. To further speed up this step,
consider use of an outsourced process
developer who has proven know-how
on scaleup of similar processes, especially
when experienced in-house resources
are unavailable. The greater
the quality and the larger the quantity
of the scaleup data collected during
the pilot-plant process validation,
the faster the progress of this step and
the higher the chances of success.
Commercial-process detailed design
and construction. The considerations
to speed up this step are
similar to those in pilot-plant design
and construction.
Commercial-process demonstration
and validation. For the first
process of its kind, it is often necessary
for process developers to build
their own demonstration plants to
convince potential customers that
the process can be operated commercially
and successfully without
unforeseen troubles. To speed up this
step, process developers may form
a partnership with manufacturing
companies who have similar types of
processes and equipment that can be
used for the demonstration plants,
or those who are willing to share the
benefits if the process can be successfully
commercialized.
Commercial-process marketing
and licensing. Marketing and licensing
of the commercial process
can be a problem for inexperienced
product and process developers, especially
for manufacturing companies
carrying out their own in-house R&D.
It is worth considering a partnership
with a company that has considerable
experiences in commercial-process
marketing and licensing to save marketing
and licensing costs and reduce
risks. By collaborating with an experienced,
technology marketing and licensing
company, a process-developer
company can learn what the key issues
for marketing and licensing
are. Moreover, the process-developer
company can hire fewer people and
still be successful in marketing and
licensing. However, major disadvantages
are benefit sharing and risks of
know-how losses despite a well-written
confidentiality agreement.
Concluding remarks
All strategies above have been extracted
from validated technical references
and years of the author's experience
in process development. The
ideas of conceptualizing commercial
process design early and designing a
pilot plant based on a scale-down of a
commercial plant are in good agreement
with references [5,11] and also
with actual observations of the im54
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHE.COM FEBRUARY 2013
portance of beginning with the end
in mind. There was a real case where
commercialization of an olefins polymerization
reactor was significantly
delayed because pilot plant data and
collected laboratory data were inapplicable
as they did not represent
or reflect the real phenomena well
enough to be used as valid data for
reactor scaleup. The researchers and
pilot plant developers failed to think
beforehand about how the commercial
polymerization reactor would look and
what the commercial reactor size and
internal flow regime would be.
■
Edited by Dorothy Lozowski
References
1. Sinclair, G., Allocate R&D Resources Effectively,
Chem. Eng. Prog., February 1999.
2. Kelkar, V. V., others, A strategy for excellence
in process development, Chem. Eng. Prog.,
October 2008.
3. Mueller, J., others, Integrated product teams
for process development, Chem. Eng. Prog.,
July 2005.
4. Mukesh, D., Succeed at Process Development,
Chem. Eng. Prog., February 1999.
5. Bisio, A., others, " Scale-Up of Chemical Processes, "
John Wiley and Sons, 1985.
6. Worstell, J. H., others, Improve Fixed Bed
Reactor Performance without Expenditure,
Chem. Eng. Prog., January 2004.
7. Leng, R. B., Scale-Up Specialty Chemical
Processes Directly, Chem. Eng. Prog., November
2004.
8. Kenat, T. A., Use Your Pilot Plant as a Process
Design Tool, Chem. Eng. Prog., February
1999.
9. Martin, P., others, Fast-Track Your Pilot
Plant Projects (Part 1), Chem. Eng. Prog.,
January 2005.
10. Lalla, L. D., Don't Apply Commercial Plant
Specifications to Pilot Plants (Part 2), " Chem.
Eng. Prog., February 2005.
11. Boundy, R. H. and Amos, J.L., " A History of
Dow Chemical Physics Lab, " Marcel Dekker
Inc., 1990.
Author
Wiroon Tanthapanichakoon
is a process design engineer
working for the olefins
Research and Technology
(R&T) office of SCG Chemicals,
Co. Ltd. (Thailand;
Email: wiroont@scg.co.th or
twiroon@gmail.com; Phone:
+66-38-911-240 or +66-83177-8108).
He is involved
mainly in process and equipment
design, as well as basic
engineering for research and development projects
for SCG Chemicals. He has several years of
experience as a process engineer with an Exxon
Mobil subsidiary refinery in Thailand, and as a
process design and energy improvement engineer
with SCG Chemicals. He obtained his B.E.
and M.E. degrees in chemical engineering from
Kyoto University, Japan. He is a professional licensed
engineer in Thailand and has authored
several technical articles.
http://WWW.CHE.COM
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