April 2013
Intermediate to advanced
112 pages
3h 9m
English
For processes only involving gas and liquid flows mini-plants can be very useful. They cost only a fraction of a pilot plant and can also be quickly modified or cleaned when a problem occurs. A mini-plant typically operates at 0.1 kg/h production rate. Reactions and separations such as distillation can easily be carried out and problems such as foaming or frothing are quickly discovered, especially when the construction material is glass.
In cases where a pilot plant is skipped a mini-plant can reduce potential risks enormously, but then the mini-plant should be a down-scaled version of the commercial scale process design with all unit operations and all recycle flows with the same ...