Here is a collection of thoughts on running a chemical plant, listed in no particular order.
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Always have some extra production capacity. Don’t be tempted to book every hour of plant time with processes.
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It’s easier to get purchase orders than you think. Corollary: It is easier to overbook a plant than you think.
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Hire the smartest, hardest working people you can afford.
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Never do R&D in the plant. Consider using laboratories for that.
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You will eventually have an incident or an accident. Make sure the HAZWOPER people drill every now and then.
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Beware the rag layer. It will confuse the operators.
- Hot filter cakes can ruin your whole day.
- Somebody sit and think about how failures might be expected to propagate during an incident.
- Don’t be an asshole.
- Watch out for reactions with initiation lag times. They’ll getcha. Stored energy is scary.
- Try to get the supplier to send dry, clean solvents. Purifying solvents is always a money losing operation. The same is true for all starting materials.
- To the greatest extent possible, try to move solutions around rather than solids. Solids handling is always more difficult.
- Think about where that butyllithium solution is going to go if there is a spill.
- Try to decide early on how you would like the next disaster to unfold. This is true for all hazardous operations- plant operations, highway driving, or marriage.
I’m sure there are many more good suggestions from Bloggerspace.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
– Mixing is stretch and fold, not spin.
– Look up the wildly non-linear relationships among energy, volume, and mixer results. Design it bigger. Cavitation is bad. After 12 hours of mixing and drive heating the only vote that counts gets cast.
– 1000 gallons of “slight” exotherm is an expensive lesson.
– If nominal operation at your readout panel does not have all needles pointing straight up, start firing management then rotate the gauge faces. Digital is not necessarily better.
– Filling a gauge with glycerin effectively damps violent needle oscillation near end until the far end ruptures.
– There is no reason to build with expensive two ferrule swage fittings. When you rebuild, there is. Avoid silver plating and acetylene, azide; ditto with copper and alloys.
– Ask the folks who do the work. They know stuff.
– When did you last take your workers to lunch? When did they last take you to the cleaners? Rank does not justify callous treatment, and that’s true in both directions.
-Foster pride and ownership amongst the operations group. Good housekeeping and safer practices will follow.
-If the people operating the plant can’t do it ‘on manual’, it’s dangerous to do it ‘on automatic’.
-If the maintenance crew isn’t functioning properly, nothing will be for very long.
-Promote from within, where appropriate, especially from the floor.
-Sometimes the only way to answer a question is with a plant test (“just throw it in”).
I really like the “Mixing is stretch and fold, not spin.” I’ll pass that along to others. Maintenance is too often overlooked when handing out credits.
Let’s Change this to “On Running an Academic Plant”
1. Fill every square foot with excess personnel, spare chemical drums. Oh and don’t forget to leave small pilot lights burning where possible.
2. Hire as many people as you can, as cheaply as you can.
3.Mix R&D with scale-ups, make sure there is at least one 5 kg chunk of sodium under mineral oil next to hazardous procedures.
4. HAZWOPR? What’s HAZWOPR?
5.Assume all failures will be brushed under the rug. If building explodes, apply for new funding for explosion proof buildings with drain-holes for employee residue.
6. Be the biggest asshole you can be. After all, you’re an academic.
7. Stored energy is your friend. Place fire-extinguishers next to reaction.
8.Moving solutions vs solids is same thing. Graduate students have hardened spines.
9. Disasters are consequence free. So don’t think about them.
Or am I exaggerating?
Yowza! Sounds like Nelson has some “issues” here. You’re right, though. Industrial chemistry has to be learned on the job. Academia is for cultivating academics. But when you think about it, the usual chemistry curriculum and graduation requirements don’t allow much time for coursework outside of the core ACS guidelines.