(161e) Scale down: Unusual "Pilot Plants" and Unit Ops

Finding the minimum scale needed to get the correct answer is one of the exciting challenges of process development. Often, unit operations in the laboratory look nothing like the commercial processes they are seeking to emulate. Small-scale approaches often lend themselves to multi-throughput experimentation, which in some cases can enable higher accuracy and more rapid discernment of underlying phenomenon than is possible with more conventional larger-scale analogs. Examples of extreme scale down in bubble column and fixed-bed reactors, adsorption, extraction, crystallization, and distillation are presented.