Pilot plant

A pilot plant is a small industrial system, which is operated to generate information about the behavior of the system for use in design of larger facilities. Pilot plant is a relative term in the sense that plants are typically smaller than full-scale production plants, but are built in a range of sizes. Some pilot plants are built in laboratories using stock lab equipment, while others require substantial engineering efforts, cost millions of dollars, and are custom-assembled and fabricated from process equipment, instrumentation and piping. They can also be used to train personnel for a full-scale plant. Some people use the terms pilot plant and demonstration plant interchangeably, but usually a pilot plant is smaller in scale than a demonstration plant.