The Scale-Up Challenge

Scaling a mixing process from laboratory (1–10 L) to production scale (500–5 000 L) is one of the most complex steps in process engineering. Simply enlarging the vessel and impeller often leads to inconsistent product quality because key dimensionless parameters — Reynolds number, power number, tip speed, and energy dissipation rate per unit mass — do not scale linearly with vessel diameter.

PVA Systems Approach

PVA Systems addresses scale-up by keeping the critical process parameter — the energy input per unit volume at the rotor–stator gap — constant across all scales. Because the homogenizer workhead geometry remains identical from the 10 L lab unit to the 5 000 L production system, the same tip speed and gap clearance produce equivalent shear rates. Batch-to-batch variability is minimised, and products developed on a lab unit can be reproduced at full production scale without reformulation. This "process-unit-centric" design philosophy ensures that a single recipe produces identical particle sizes, viscosity, and stability regardless of batch volume.