Production of any compound in the chemical industry has to go through a process, be it a single or a multi-step process. Process Engineering analyses and systematically connects the respective steps to establish the most optimum manufacturing method for the product.
Process Engineering helps establish the mass and energy balance across the respective process operation and identifies the most optimum parameters for designing and /or specifying the individual equipment
A client should look for a process engineering consultant when he needs to get the plant designed and set up by optimizing the process which can improve the product yield, reduce energy consumption, decrease cycle time, reduce wastage and thereby decrease manufacturing cost.
Unless the client is replicating the manufacturing process and production capacity 1 to 1, it always helps going through trials on a pilot plant.
Apart from generating data for scale-up with respect to chemistry and process, a pilot plant helps establishing the product on a smaller scale through test marketing.
It may be possible to go through trial production in such a set up. However, if the eventual objective is to derive experience from such a facility to design the full scale plant, it is preferable to get the pilot plant designed and tailor-made where facilities will require to capture operating data specific to the scale-up technique.
It is best to get a pilot plant properly designed and built keeping the eventual scale-up to commercial scale in mind.
Process Engineering must be followed by a carefully planned Detailed Engineering that ensures right implementation of the recommendation brought out through Process Engineering.