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On behalf of Bill Dale, who was unable to attend the meeting, Bob Duggal, Area 12b Vice-Chair, welcomed everyone to the meeting. An attendance list was circulated for those attending to complete. David Edwards agreed to act as secretary for the meeting.

The Pilot Plant Area Sessions scheduled for the Houston conference in Spring 2001 and the Reno Conference in Fall 2001 were reviewed. There was one session held in Houston titled "Polymerization Pilot Plants". The chair was Bob Duggal, and the Vice-Chair was David Edwards. Seven papers were presented, and the attendance was in the 28-30 range. The general impression, however, was that overall attendance at the conference was significantly lower than at previous spring conferences.

It was noted that there is no scheduled activity for Area 12b at the Reno conference, where there is a Process Development Division Topical Conference on Batch Processing. In Reno, Bill Dale will step down as the Chair of the Area, and Bob Duggal will assume this position. David Edwards will become First Vice Chair. An election will be held at the Reno conference for the Second Vice Chair position. Kamel Maker (Du Pont) volunteered to run for this position.

The Pilot Plant Area Sessions selected for the New Orleans conference in Spring 2002 were reviewed. There will be two sessions :

Process Improvements in Existing Processes	Yinlun Huang and Eric Townsend
R&D, Plant and Corporate Interaction	Jan Lerou and Tom Kenat

Kamel Maker volunteered to co-chair the session at New Orleans "Keeping Plants Running: Rules of Thumb and Maintenance Miracles". The chair of this session is John Battler.

Area 12b has been approached by the Fuels and Petrochemical Division to run a Polymerization session at New Orleans. Bob Duggal volunteered to discuss this offer with Christine. If the decision is to go ahead, a chair and vice-chair will be needed.

One Pilot Plant Area Session was selected for the Indianapolis conference in Fall 2002 :

Process Intensification/Miniaturization

David Edwards agreed to be the chair in Pilot Plants

Eric Townsend volunteered to act as co-chair for this session.

Based on the poor attendance at the present Houston Spring 2001 conference, a decision was made to push the Area 12b topical back to Fall 2003 in San Francisco. A regular programming session will be held at the 2003 Spring conference in Houston.

The following possible session titles were brainstormed :

• Innovation in pilot plants
• Unit operations in pilot plants
• Scale-Up/Scale Down
• Automation, on-line analysis and intelligent automation in pilot plants
• Pilot plant sized hardware
• Accelerated process development
• Commercially relevant experiments
• Maintenance, on-line time, and safety of pilot plants

Joe Powell (Shell) volunteered to review the above suggestions, and suggest a title in time for the Fall 2001 meeting in Reno.

An Area 12b Topical Conference will be held in San Francisco. The topical conference will be titled "Pilot Plants in Process Development", and there will be 4-5 sessions. David Edwards volunteered to be the topical chair. The session allocations for this topical conference will be finalized in the Fall 2001 meeting in Reno. The following five session titles were suggested as a starting point :

1. The Role of Pilot Plants in Process Development (past, present and future)
2. Pilot Plants : The uniqueness of Small Scale
3. Traditional and Novel Pilot Plant Reactors
4. Automation, On-line Analysis and Intelligent Automation in Pilot Plants
5. Key Factors in Successful Pilot Plant Design and Operation

Co-sponsoring Session 3 with the Reaction Engineering and/or Safety Divisions will be pursued once these session titles are finalized in Reno. Members of Area 12b were requested to feedback comments on this suggested list of session titles, and to propose alternative titles which may be appropriate. There may also be an Area 12a topical conference at the same meeting. This will be determined later.

1. David Edwards volunteered to be the topical chair in Fall 2003 in San Francisco.
2. Co-sponsorship of one of the above suggested sessions at the 2003 Fall topical conference will be pursued with the Safety and Reaction Divisions.
3. David Edwards will continue as IChemE liaison person on an ongoing basis. This will be removed from the action item list.
4. Tom Kenat is requesting real life accounts of pilot plant success stories for a book he is writing on pilot plants. This item will be removed from the action item list.
5. Benchmarking of pilot plants is being developed by Shiah Cherney and Bob Duggal. Benchmarking could be showcased further at the 2003 Fall Topical Conference.
6. The Call for Papers Coordinator for Area 12b is David Edwards. The 'Job Description' for the Call for papers coordinator was discussed. An up-to-date mailing list needs to be updated on a regular basis.
7. Electronic publication of proceedings on the Process Development Division website is an objective for our area. However, AIChE may not agree this to because publications are a revenue stream. Ramesh Rameswaran volunteered to take this issue away for further action.

The topic 'Benchmarking of Pilot Plants' was presented in some detail by Shiah Cherney. The content of the overheads from the presentation are attached below, along with the number of votes each topic received from the members at the meeting :

Start with Non Proprietary Areas (where it is) Potentially Easy to Share Info

EH&S (2)
• Laboratory Safety Standards and Practices
• Laboratory Environmental Standards and Practices
• Enforcement Procedures
• Organization used for EH&S Items

Training (0)
• Operator Training Methods
• Engineer Training Methods
• Corp. Training Requirements
• Site Specific Training Requirements

Analytical Issues (4) (Bob Duggal volunteered to look into this issue further)
• General Approach
• Dedicated Instruments or Laboratory Wide Analytical?
• Make and Models of Preferred Instruments

Staffing and Shift Scheduling (6) (Joe Powell volunteered to look into this issue further)
• What shift scheduling do you use and why
• How many operators for different types of pilot plants

Levels of Automation-Tied in to Staffing (6) (Joe Powell volunteered to look into this issue further)

Cleaning, Validations and Verification for Pharmaceuticals (2)

Estimating the Value and Cost of Pilot Plants (6) (Eric Townsend volunteered to look into this issue further)

• Questionnaires
• Presentations at a Committee Meeting or a Session
• Visits to Individual Company
• All or some of the Above

1. Consider creating a questionnaire on the three areas of interest highlighted above. Eric Townsend, Bob Duggal and Joe Powell volunteered to create sample questionnaires for comment in MS Word format. The target date is to prepare these samples by the Reno Meeting (Fall 2001).
2. Identify one individual per company/site to complete the questionnaire so that we get a consistent response from each company.
3. E-mail comments, suggestions etc.. to .

Next Meeting

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Author: D. Edwards
May 2, 2001

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Task	Responsibility	Due Date
Nominate Kamel Maker as Vice-Chair for Area 12b	Area 12b Leadership Team	Reno Meeting
Looking into organizing Polymerization Pilots Plant session as part of Polymer Processing Topical at New Orleans in 2002	Bob Duggal	5/15/01
Propose session titles for 2003 Spring Meeting in Houston	Joe Powell	Reno Meeting
Canvass AIChE's comments regarding posting Area 12b session papers on our web-site	Ramesh Rameshwaran	Reno Meeting
Develop questionnaires for Pilot Plant Benchmarking Study	Shiah Cherney, Joe Powell, Eric Townsend, Bob Duggal	Reno Meeting