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Which services should manufacturers offer for pilot plant work and piloting in order to secure investment decisions?

In order to underpin investment decisions, manufacturers should provide a comprehensive pilot-plant and piloting offering that assesses technical feasibility, scale-up risks, economy and the marketability of the product robustly before capital is tied up in large-scale plants. Such services are particularly valuable where process data from the laboratory, the pilot plant and the pilot facility are to be carried over into later validation and scaling.

Feasibility services

  • Feasibility studies for assessing material properties, process parameters and target variables.
  • Proof-of-concept trials with documented results.
  • Identification of critical process limits and robustness tests with variations in raw materials and operating conditions.
  • Trial series with the original material under conditions that are as realistic as possible.

Scale-up and engineering

  • Scale-up consultancy with transfer of laboratory and pilot-plant data to the production scale.
  • Derivation of design parameters, similarity characteristic numbers and scaling factors.
  • Support with basic and detail engineering, clarification of interfaces and FEED preparation.
  • Simulation of material, energy and process behaviour at higher throughput.

Analysis and data

  • Process and product analysis with in-line, at-line and offline measurements.
  • Statistical trial planning, trend analyses and determination of stable process windows.
  • Mass and energy balances as the basis for OPEX, sustainability and profitability assessments.

Economic assurance

  • TCO, CAPEX and OPEX assessments on the basis of real trial data.
  • Payback, ROI and sensitivity analyses.
  • Definition and validation of performance KPIs, for example throughput, energy consumption or reject rate.

Documentation and validation

  • Complete trial documentation with raw data, evaluations and reports.
  • Support with DQ, IQ and OQ and with transfer into the validation concept.
  • Data packages for approvals, compliance and later process validation.

The amixon® pilot plant: trials, scale-up and process optimisation with the original product

35 test units – from laboratory scale to pilot scale

At its headquarters in Paderborn, amixon® operates a pilot plant with 35 test units of various sizes. Processes can thereby be represented realistically from small scale up to pilot scale. Robust statements for the production scale are possible even with limited product quantities. Pilot plants in Japan, India, Thailand, China, South Korea and the USA are additionally available worldwide.

Real conditions instead of paper values

Mixing processes such as mixing, homogenising, granulating, agglomerating, moistening and coating are examined, as are drying and reaction processes such as vacuum drying, thermal processes and syntheses. The trials run with the original product, within the intended temperature and pressure range, with real fill levels and batch sizes and the planned energy input. Mixing quality, product protection, energy input, cleanability and reproducibility in later series operation are assessed.

Joint execution, evaluation and documentation

The trials are carried out, evaluated and documented together with amixon® experts. The aim is to select the optimum apparatus and the appropriate process parameters for the specific application, including formulation development and process optimisation. The result is a robust basis for decision-making: confirmation of the process parameters under real conditions, assurance of product quality and economy as well as minimisation of technical and economic risks before the investment.

Mixing machines provided on loan

Because of the large number of test mixers in different sizes, amixon® also provides mixing machines on loan for certain projects. This supports process or product optimisation under near-production conditions and facilitates the development of robust process parameters before the final investment decision.

Seamless transition into production

Because trial and production mixers work with the same mixing principle and are available in graded sizes, pilot-plant parameters can be transferred directly to the target machine. After commissioning, amixon® also supports product changeovers and scale-up with process engineering, product development and process optimisation.

Manufacture in Paderborn as the quality foundation

amixon® develops and manufactures exclusively at the Paderborn works with a large depth of manufacture and uses components from Germany exclusively. As a certified welding company with European, Japanese, Korean and American qualifications, amixon® designs every apparatus as a one-off on the basis of the operator's URS. Quality control remains entirely in-house without gaps, and every specification is verifiable down to component level. This manufacturing autonomy also secures long-term supply: every component can still be re-manufactured reproducibly decades later.

Service across the entire life cycle

After commissioning, amixon® remains at the operator's side: regular inspections and preventive maintenance secure availability, on request with predictive maintenance. Selected wear parts are supplied together with the initial delivery; most spare parts are held at the Paderborn site, others at the service bases in Japan and the USA. Many amixon® machines have been in daily use for more than 30 years; modernisation and retrofitting keep them at the state of the art.