Successes and Failures of Pilot Plants for Technology Commercialization in Chemicals and Fuels: a Look Back over 3 Decades

Pilot plants for commercial deployments in Shell over the past three decades have included fully integrated units, and virtual integration using modeling to integrate piloting of select unit operations, as well as data from bench- scale units and cold-flow experiments. The successes and issues for these pilot plants and demonstration units will be reviewed, including challenges in scale-down and solids handling which impact trade-offs between risk-reduction accuracy, timing, and development cost. Adaptations of existing pilots to new or modified projects and use of pilot plants and bench scale units to address discrepancies or problems learned after commercial startup will also be presented for assessment of best practices and learnings for the use of pilot plants in process development and technology commercialization.