Laboratory and pilot plant process development

Process Scale-Up

Scale-up is inherent in all industrial activity. Scale-up is constantly on the minds of chemists and engineers concerned with the development of new processes or expansion of existing ones.

When a new chemical process or a change of a process moves from the laboratory to the pilot plant to the manufacturing facility, unexpected problems are often encountered. The problems could be of either chemical or physical nature, or a variation of both.

One of the most frustrating difficulties that can be encountered is the difference of equipment used from small laboratory scale to full-scale production. When technology used from lab scale to production scale is different, it can lead to unexpected differences in product quality, texture and more.

One other challenge for most laboratories is that they are equipped with lab scale equipment that allows testing of only a couple of liters at a time. Pilot scale process development sometimes requires tens of liters of product to test other downstream equipment or processes.

A wide range of process equipment

To help process development, we make available to our customers a wide range of process equipment. Some equipment is available for testing in our facility, where most of our trial fleet is available for on-site testing. We provide simple and effective solutions on a small scale, allowing you to replicate the capabilities of production scale models in the laboratory and helping you to scale up with confidence.

We also provide access to our partners laboratories which offer extensive in-house testing.

Here is a common list of laboratory and pilot scale process equipment that we have at your disposal: