1.1.

THE PILOT PLANT CONCEPT

The necessity of pilot plants for process development has been argued extensively,
with the dispute centred primarily on the need for piloting processes that
produce organic chemicals. The circumstances differ, however, for hydrometallurgical
processes such as the recovery of uranium from its ores, because the raw
material, uranium ore, has a decisive influence on the process. Since the uranium
minerals and the composition of the gangue are both variable, it is risky to scale up
the laboratory results using standard chemical engineering principles and
projections.
Unless one has extensive experience with similar ores, it is advisable to verify
the laboratory results in a pilot plant: either in a complete flow sheet or, at least,
in the most complex parts of the process where recirculating streams could accumulate
impurities over long periods of time.
The successful recovery of uranium from an ore body requires a sequence of
activities, beginning with the study of the ore body, followed by laboratory scale
exploratory studies of the first phases of the process, mainly the leaching operations.
As the knowledge of the ore body improves and representative samples become
available, a detailed experimental laboratory project is carried out. The aim of this
research is to define the most advantageous flow sheet and to develop the design and
operating information. This information will lead to the prefeasibility studies which,
if positive, will be used to develop engineering criteria for the industrial plant.
The design of a commercial plant can be unsuitable if the available experience
is not extensive enough to scale up the information from bench scale laboratory tests,
or if the uranium ore has some peculiarities in its uranium or host rock minerals.
Baekeland's [1] famous comment, "Commit your blunders on a small scale and
make your profit on a large scale", can be applied to this situation where the pilot
plant represents an intermediate stage between the laboratory studies and the industrial
plant. The necessity of the pilot plant will depend on the complexity of the ore
and the experience available.
The pilot plant must be understood not as a scale-up of laboratory equipment
[2], but as a small scale simulation of the future industrial operations. Results
of the laboratory studies will be used to choose the most suitable process for the ore
deposit and will lead to the selection of the equipment for each stage of the flow sheet
(for instance, pneumatic or mechanical stirred tanks for leaching, thickeners or
filters for counter-current washing, etc.). If the prefeasibility studies are positive and
if pilot plant studies are judged to be necessary, the pilot plant will be designed to
1
simulate the industrial operations. It is not always necessary that the pilot plant
include all of the flow sheet stages, but it must include at least those which (a) differ
fairly markedly from conventional practice; (b) require equipment not frequently
used; (c) have caused some problems at the laboratory scale; and (d) have some elements,
even trace elements, that might build up in some streams, for example in solvent
extraction.
In pilot plants for new chemical processes it is usually desirable to use the same
materials of construction that will be used in the industrial plant. In the case of uranium
plants, however, there is extensive experience and information about materials
of construction. Therefore it is not generally necessary to use the same materials in
the pilot plant as in the full scale plant, unless some special ores must be tested.
1.2. PILOT PLANT OBJECTIVES