Dow AgroSciences has supported two pilot plant facilities for development and scale-up of new batch agrochemicals for several years. One of the pilot plant facilities consistently obtained higher yields and lower run-to-run variability. An improvement project using recently developed data mining techniques and Six Sigma methodology was initiated to resolve the operating differences between the ...

Principles of aerobic and anaerobic treatment of organic wastes were developed in the previous papers of this symposium. The application of these principles to engineering design is discussed in this paper. Although the discussion is restricted to the aerobic treatments, the concepts are equally applicable to anaerobic treatments. Laboratory or pilot plant studies are employed to develop engine...

Under separate contracts from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy (DOEFE), Los Alamos National Laboratory, and a team of SIMTECHE and Nexant (a Bechtel Technology and Consulting Company) are jointly working to develop the proprietary process for capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from a shifted syngas stream (a mixture of mostly carbon dioxide and hydrogen) prior to combustion in...

In thermal cracking plants, it is desired to apply an optimal temperature profile along the reactor to minimize the operation cost. In this article a simulator is developed by the use of a mathematical model, which describes the static operation of a naphtha thermal cracking pilot plant. The model is used to predict the steady state profiles of the gas temperature and product yields. Using ...

Wet flue gas desulphurization (FGD) plants with forced oxidation, installed at coal and oil fired power plants for removal of SO2(g), must produce gypsum of high quality. However, quality issues such as an excessive moisture content, due to poor gypsum dewatering properties, may occur from time to time. In this work, the particle size distribution, morphology, and filtration rate of wet FGD gyp...

A pilot-scale fluidized bed reactor was built and used to study and gain a better understanding of the propylene polymerization process at conditions similar to those of industrial fluidized-bed reactors. Propylene polymerization reaction was carried out continuously in the reactor and dynamic temperatures, and propylene and hydrogen concentrations data were collected. Simulated dynamic profile...

This paper presents a model predictive control (MPC) of a pasteurization pilot plant based on an LPV model. Since not all the states are measured, an observer is also designed, which allows implementing an output-feedback MPC scheme. However, the model of the plant is not completely observable when augmented with the disturbance models. In order to solve this problem, the following strategies a...