Scale up or scale down
Validate process behaviour between kilo-lab development and industrial production.
Glass Pilot Plants
Integrated borosilicate glass pilot plants for scaling chemical and pharmaceutical processes from kilo-lab development towards commercial production.
UD Technologies · Vadodara, India
Process scale-up
Connect laboratory development with commercial production.
A pilot plant brings the principal operations of a production process together at an intermediate scale. It gives process teams a practical environment for confirming operating parameters, evaluating equipment arrangements and preparing a kilo-lab process for commercialisation.
UD Technologies engineers glass pilot plants around the complete process sequence: raw-material preparation, reaction, separation and finished-product treatment. Transparent borosilicate glass makes flow, mixing, phase separation and fouling visible while the modular structure allows individual operations to be supplied separately or as an integrated plant.
Batch or continuous
Configure the system around campaign production, continuous flow or a hybrid sequence.
Integrated operations
Combine reaction with preparation, separation, purification and product finishing.
Custom engineered
Equipment, controls and layouts are matched to the operating parameters and process duty.
Engineering capabilities
A complete process system, not simply a reactor.
Each installation is assembled from the unit operations required by the chemistry, material phases and product-quality targets.
Raw-material preparation
Preheating, pre-cooking, filtration and purification stages prepare feeds before reaction.
Reaction systems
Select cylindrical, spherical or triple-walled reactors for batch and low-temperature duties.
Continuous processing
CSTR, plug-flow and falling-film arrangements support controlled continuous operation.
Separation and purification
Distillation, extraction, absorption, adsorption and chromatography can be integrated downstream.
Solid handling
Nutsche and agitated nutsche filtration systems support filtration, washing and product recovery.
Controls and data acquisition
Computerised control and data logging options support repeatable trials and process evaluation.
Process building blocks
Configure the pilot plant around the unit operations.
The groups below describe typical system modules. Final equipment, materials, capacities and controls are selected against the process requirement.
Reaction and distillation
Reaction, solvent recovery and purification
Build the central process around a glass reactor and add the distillation arrangement required for recovery, concentration or product purification.
Typical equipment
- Reactors
- Triple-walled, cylindrical or spherical glass reactors
- Operation
- Batch, semi-batch or continuous processing
- Distillation
- Application-specific columns, condensers, receivers and reboilers
- Thermal duty
- Heating, cooling, condensation and evaporation
Liquid and solid extraction
Integrated extraction and phase-separation systems
Liquid–liquid and solid–liquid extraction modules can be combined with reaction, solvent recovery and finishing operations in one supported plant.
Typical equipment
- Liquid–liquid
- Extraction, settling and phase separation
- Solid–liquid
- Contacting, extraction and solids separation
- Solvent handling
- Recovery and recycle can be integrated
- Plant format
- Standalone module or part of a complete process
Absorption, adsorption and chromatography
Glass systems for mass transfer and selective separation
Visible glass columns support gas–liquid absorption, gas–solid adsorption and chromatographic separations where observation of the process is valuable.
Typical equipment
- Gas–liquid
- Absorption columns and associated circulation
- Gas–solid
- Adsorption equipment in glass
- Liquid separation
- Chromatography columns
- Integration
- Feed preparation and downstream recovery modules
Filtration, evaporation and heat transfer
Product finishing and utility operations
Complete the process with filtration, evaporation and heat-transfer equipment selected for the product, solvent and operating conditions.
Typical equipment
- Filtration
- Nutsche and agitated nutsche filters
- Evaporation
- Falling-film, rotary-film and wiped-film evaporators
- Heat exchange
- Heaters, coolers, condensers, evaporators and reboilers
- Controls
- Manual or computerised control and data acquisition
Core equipment
Start with the reactor at the heart of the process.
Review the available jacketed, filter, cryogenic and reaction-distillation reactor configurations before defining the surrounding pilot-plant operations.
Discuss your requirements