RHE AMERICA - Pilot Unit Adapted to Manufacture Synthetic Resins

PILOT UNIT ADAPTED TO MANUFACTURE SYNTHETIC RESINS

Published in "The Process Engineer" - Sept. 2005

While pilot units are commonly used by various industries, a unit installed at a technology company based in Florida to manufacture synthetic resins is likely the first of its kind.

Pilot units can be the ideal tool for developing a new product. They represent a compromise between laboratory type equipment (cheaper, but useless for process and equipment optimization as well as semi production) and full scale plants (too costly, technical and commercial risks at the initial stage of the product development). Furthermore, a skidded fully automatic pilot unit is easy to install and operate. It does not require EPA permitting as a full scale plant does.

Involved in the development and manufacture of rechargeable solid polymer batteries, the technology company was very concerned about protecting their intellectual property and was looking for a way to develop special resins in their own test center. Of primary concern was the ability to produce enough resins for both their own internal use as well as research with their joint venture partners. In choosing someone to manufacture the system, the company was looking for an engineering firm with process know-how in manufacturing synthetic resins. They also needed someone who was capable of designing and supplying a pilot unit that could meet their special needs.

After researching potential suppliers, the company choose RHE America, which is the North American office of RHE Haendel Engineering GmbH of Germany, which has more than 40 years of experience in designing synthetic resins and polymer emulsion manufacturing plants.

The unit, which was installed by RHE America, is designed and specially adapted to manufacture synthetic resins and includes features to handle solid and raw materials and products. It can also separate products by distillation and decantation. It is designed to operate under full vacuum or pressure up to 150 psig and temperatures up to 500^oF by using thermal oil as a heating medium. One of the unit's special features is the split shell reactor that allows easy cleaning if fouling occurs.

All equipment is installed on a skid with an access platform for easy operation and maintenance. This particular type of pilot unit can be useful to several different types of industries including paint and coating, ink manufacturing, plastic manufacturing and all specialty chemical industries that want to develop new products.

The pilot unit includes the following features:

A 49-gallon split flanged reactor with ½ pipe coil welded around the shell, high efficiency agitation system and a hydraulic jack to lower half reactor for easy cleaning.
A packed distillation column with reflux condenser and pump
A decantation tank with liquid product handling and recycling system
A raw material feeding system
A vacuum pump
An electric heated thermal oil unit
A fully automatic control system with PLC, PC based HMI, motor control and VFDs

Why Set Up a Pilot Unit?

One important benefit is that the pilot unit uses small but commercially available equipment which provides a realistic basis to optimize the design of a full scale production plant.

Another benefit is that the pilot unit allows you to quantify more accurately the utility requirement and achieve process optimization, which, in turn, will likely lead to significant savings in the operating costs of the production plant. In a lab, utilities are plentiful and, in most cases, never monitored.

A pilot unit provides realistic information about batch times which helps to determine the optimum size of the production plant.

Another factor in favor of a pilot unit is that it provides valuable indications of how much corrosion, abrasion, fouling (if any) and other operating conditions you may encounter once you reach full production. This is something you won't see in a laboratory, but something important you should be prepared for.

And finally, from a marketing perspective, by running semi-production with a pilot unit, you can benchmark your production in a particular industry segment or geographical area and determine the viability of selling it on a larger scale.