Search

A pilot plant is the pre-commercial production system which includes new production technology and produces small volumes of new technology based products. Scale up is the process of increasing the batch size or a procedure for applying the same process to different output volumes. Process scale up for a technology is one the most common reasons to build a pilot plant. It is a connection between Research and Development (R and D) Industry. It is a Hybrid development facility and Manufacturing unit. Even though commercialization is the primary motivation for pilot plant projects, there can be multiple, complex objectives that will vary by project organization and goals. It is a place where the 5M'S like Money, Material, Man, Method and Machine are brought together for the manufacturing of the products. In pilot plant before investing a large sum of money on a production unit it is a small preliminary lab scale formula to be carried out on a model of proposed plant. Pilot plant scale up gives information about examination of formula can be done, review of range of relevant processing equipment, the specification of the raw materials can be understood, we can know the production rate, the physical space needed can be checked. It can store appropriate records and reports for analysis to support GMP process. Pilot plant scale up considerations for solids, liquids, semisolids is discussed here. The main objective of pilot plant is "Find mistakes on a small scale and make profit on large scale". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]