Future Developments In The Design And Use Of Polyolefin Pilot Plants

Rapid changes in the polyolefins industry and high-speed advances in polyolefin technology are changing research and development practices worldwide. As a result, the requirements for pilot plants used by researchers and engineers are changing, as well. This paper explores five areas of rapid change in the polyolefins industry: markets, industry, technology, methodologies, and information. These changes can be seen as main drivers for changes in polyolefins research and development and the future design and use of polyolefin pilot plants. After exploration of these five areas, a summary is made to envision the future pilot plants.

The very nature of polyolefin processes requires sophisticated pilot plants. The complexity of polyolefins in chemistry and transport, the difficulty in predicting the growth and behavior of particles through the process train, and uncertainties in predicting precise product properties dictate the use of pilot plants.

Pilot plants are justified on the basis of minimizing technical, economic, marketing, and production risks, and opening opportunities for more revenue and profitability. These uses and the need for material quantities for market testing can make polyolefin pilot plants in particular quite sizeable. Of course, these traditionally-sized pilot plants are costly to construct and operate. There is thus a drive to obtain more and better information at the laboratory scale: to make pilot plants smaller, more efficient, and of higher value, and even bypass piloting by more extensive use of modeling and simulation scale-up techniques.

The important changes now occurring in the marketplace and the industry, as well as in technology, will make concurrent changes in how we design and use pilot plants essential, and in fact inevitable.