Lab-scale Pilot Plants

It is important to consider that the fast evolution of process control technology leads to important improvements in pilot plant installations. Most of existing pilot plants become almost obsolete in a short period of time because the incorporation of the new advances in control technology results very expensive. The repeatitivity, reproducibility or precision of the measurements can be improved with new instrumentation, together with the amount of information supplied by an experiment, and the possibilities of automation and capacity of work in absence of operators increase.

The incorporation to the market of new instrumentation (smart instrumentation, field communications, automation of chromatographic techniques, low cost time-sharing computers, new materials ...) has made possible to think of a computerized process control system designed to control discrete operations common to many processes that are studied at pilot plant level, in such a way, that single designs can be used for many different processes.

Sixteen years of experience and know-how back the company in the design, development and construction of several types of pilot plants. Especially we have a huge experience using MFC's, high pressure systems (400-600 bars), special alloys (Hastelloy®, Inconel®, Monel®, etc.), pressure control systems, separation systems of pressurized liquid-gas mixtures, supervisory control and data acquisition by PC, etc. The whole lot of equipments, reactors and plants are delivered "turn-key", checked and commissioned. We always provide a user's handbook and practical training.

The objective of the PID Eng&Tech Company is, therefore, to design and prepare standard equipment to carry out common operation steps of pilot plant reactors used to study different chemical processes and, thus, to build such pilot plant reactors using modular components with the aim of diminishing at least one factor of 2 existing: construction time and cost. The design will include the latest advances in process control technology.

PID Eng&Tech also offers the possibility of installing improved automated control systems for pilot plants already in operation.

Our automated control systems for laboratory reactors and pilot plants have many advantages when compared to other systems. Some of them include size and easy scale-up. One of the advantages of our units is that you can start "small" and later scale-up the system as your requirements grow. Putting together a system in this way keeps your initial cost low, yet provides you with the ability to add instruments and equipments at any time in the future. Lastly, as you build and expand your system, the initial cost of the unit decreases. With a 19" industrial rack, however, you can place the system in almost any location. Other enclosures are also available to provide the system with additional protection.

Our automated control systems include the Process@® software for supervisory control and data acquisition. Process@® software is based on digital RS-485 communications between controllers and management control system. The communication with the computer is managed by means of the Ethernet, TCP/IP protocol.