Pilot Plants in Pyrometallurgy

Pilot plants are built with the objectives of anticipating problems that are likely to occur on the commercial scale, obtaining design data and giving an idea of full scale operating costs. In general terms they may be described as any size of plant between a laboratory apparatus and the smallest economic commercial unit, bearing in mind Baeke-land's advice given in 19161 which was "Commit your blun- ders on a small scale and make your profits on a large scale". There are also other types of pilot plant such as those built specifically to obtain market information; perhaps more correctly called "semicommercial" plants. In addition, there are pilot plants maintained solely to deal with problems arising in an established plant which result from variations in raw materials and end product required. It is the purpose of this paper, however, to consider pilot plants which are built during the development of a process from its discovery in the laboratory to its esta-blishment on a commercial scale. In particular, some of the special problems associated with pilot plant work in pyrometallurgical operations will be discussed