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Chemical Engineering vocabulary · Scale-Up and Process Development

Pilot plant

Meaning in chemical engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In chemical engineering, pilot plant means: A small version of a planned production plant, between laboratory and full scale, used to test the process, collect design data and make sample product.

In Turkish: pilot tesis

How it is used

Used in process development before big investments. Teams run campaigns in the pilot plant, test raw materials, measure heat release and produce material for customer trials. Results go into the design basis for the full-scale plant.

Example sentences

  1. The pilot plant runs showed that the filter cake is much wetter than in the lab.

  2. We'll make 200 kg in the pilot plant for the customer's qualification trials.

Common collocations

  • pilot plant run
  • pilot plant campaign
  • pilot plant data
  • pilot-scale
  • scale upTo take a process that works in the lab or a pilot plant and design it to run at a much larger, commercial size.
  • bench scaleThe smallest stage of process development, using laboratory equipment of a few milliliters to a few liters to test chemistry and collect first data.
  • design basisThe agreed set of data and assumptions that a plant design is based on, such as capacity, feed and product specifications, site conditions and design margins.
  • process simulationUsing software to build a computer model of a process, with its equipment, streams and thermodynamics, in order to calculate balances, size equipment and test changes.

More terms: Scale-Up and Process Development

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