Building a 20-liter high-pressure reactor lab with a 16-foot fast-exchangeable distillation tower on a limited budget is far more complicated than expected.
With the funding support from the Department of Energy, we scaled up a lab from scratch. Let me share the whole fun journey here for whoever wants to build up their own chemistry lab.
- Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID)
The whole process starts from P&ID design and equipment list planning. With the support from Hickory Run Consulting, LLC, we have the initial equipment list to identify the key instruments and their sizes. - Site Location Search
Considering the fumehood size and 16-foot distillation tower requirements, we have surveyed multiple sites from LoopNet (Commercial Real Estate Marketplace). After visiting multiple locations, we are fortunate to have received the full support of our Landlord, Enabling Us to establish our roots in this well-maintained building. - Site Layout
If you have enough funding, an engineering service will be recommended to plan your site layout. As for us, we have a diverse team including mechanical and industrial engineering capabilities. We design our layout by using OnShape 3D Modeling software. This allows us to play around with a different process layout and determine the trade-off of our process design. - Detail Equipment Design
a. Fume hoods:
It is vital to provide enough exhaust air for the chemistry lab. We did consider the exhaust air, but we didn’t consider the make-up air in the first place. This cost us three months’ delay in operation. The height of the door is also essential to move the fumehoods in. A recess roller is a good tool to replace the pallet jack.b. High-Pressure Reactor:
Given the stringent safety requirements of a high-pressure reactor system, we collaborate with SPEC engineering to refine the P&ID and engage a subcontractor to fabricate and seal the high-pressure pipes, thereby ensuring safety.c. 16-foot-tall distillation tower:
Our CEO was a mechanical engineer. He designed the distillation tower based on the size of the distillation glassware. With the fast exchangeable column rail, we have the flexibility to adjust the column heights to optimize our operation. Due to the budget limitation, our whole team worked day and night to assemble each part of the distillation tower and install it through collaboration efforts. We are so proud to have built this system entirely on our own. Nice work, Loop CO2 team. - Town Inspection:
We didn’t engage the town early enough. This cost us a lot of trouble. After installing all the equipment, the town inspector came and determined that we don’t have enough make-up air in place. Thank you for the full support from our landlord, Dan. He instructs his team to get the makeup in and install it at full speed. The town has signed off on the permit. We are finally ready to put full speed on our scale-up sample production.
From all these, we learned that:
- There is no traffic at 1 AM on I-90.
- A persistent team will always find a way to overcome the budget or technical challenge.
- It feels so good to hit a milestone.