7/8/2013

Process Design

Mihir P. Shah
DDU, Nadiad

Products Products
Which one will u select?
• Differentiable
Commodity • Produced in Large quantity
• Based on composition, purity, price – Specialty Chemicals
• Examples : Sulphuric acid, nitrogen, ethylene, chlorine etc…
Chemicals – Based on their functions and effects
– Competitive pharmaceutical products are
differentiated by their efficacy of the product.
• Produced relatively in small quantity
• • Non-differentiable
Fine • Based on composition, purity and price
• Examples: chloropropylene Oxide (Used in production of epoxy
resins), Dimethyl Formamide (used as a solvent, reaction – Commodity chemicals
Chemicals medium, and intermediate in manufacturing of pharmaceuticals),
n-butyric acid (used in beverages, flavoring, fragrance), barium – Fine chemicals
titanate powder (used in manufacturing of electronic capacitors) – Example: Nothing to choose between 99.9% benzene
made by two different manufacturer other than price
and delivery issues.
Specialty • Produced in very little amount
• Based on functionality
• Examples: pharmaceuticals, pesticides, dyestuffs, perfumes and • There is no thumb rule
Chemicals flavorings.
• One has to look at the added value of product

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How to select a Products?

Products ..Specialty Chemicals
• What is the permissible level of impurity
present in the product?
• What is the effect of impurity on upstream and
downstream processes?
• Amount of waste generation.
• Amount of byproduct generated
Based on Product type
• One has to look at the life cycle of product.
• In commodity products, very little chance of
product development, because market
requirement is quantity with fixed quality.
• But there is always a chance of process
development.
• In specialty products, product functionality
must be maintained so there is very little
chance of process development but chance of
product development will be always open.

How to select a Products?

Life Cycle Evaluation Based on Cost
• High capital and operating investment will be
required for commodity chemicals, in front of that
added value is less but they are produced in bulk,
so overall profit will be high.
• Expansion will be even costlier.
• Less capital and operating investment will be
required for specialty chemicals, in front of that
added value is very high.
• For specialty chemicals equipments procured will
be multi-purposed so one reactor can be used for
many reactions.

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Formulation of Design Problem
• Procedure of product specification.
• Ill Defined Problems can be converted to well-
Defined Problems by doing feasibility study.
• Feasibility study can be done by technical and
economical analysis.
• E.g. It is required to have expansion of monomer
plant up to 30%. There will be few questions to be
answered?
– Whether to go for it or not?
– What are the causes and consequences of expansion
and options available?
Formulation of Design Problem
• Options
– Go straight with 30% expansion
– Go for 10% expansion and purchase remaining
quantity from other companies
– Go for 20% expansion
– Produce higher quality product
– Put another plant in country where laws will allow
you to produce product at cheaper rate
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Formulation of Design Problem
• Causes
– Market need
– Other manufacturer’s requirement
• Consequences
– Competition with other manufacturer
– Waste generation
– Market can’t take more byproducts
– Life cycle of expansion, how long demand will be
there in market?
Formulation of Design Problem
• Carry out some technical and economical
discussion to eliminate some of the options.
• Then with available options carry out precise
calculations and select final option.
• This is well defined problem statement
available in front of you.
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Converting an Ill-defined problem to a Stoichiometry of overall

well-defined problem process
• The plant manager asked the plant-in-charge • Reactions involved are
team to determine what we might do to utilize • Ethylene + water ethyl alcohol
an excess of approximately 75 million kg/year
of ethylene produced in the existing plant. • Propylene + water Isopropyl alcohol
– Make a product from ethylene which can be sell in • Methane  Coke
the market profitably.
• 2ethyl alcohol water+ diethyl ether
– So it was decided to go for production of 1,50,000
m3 of 190 proof ethylene glycol. • Four carbon aldehyde as by product
– The ethylene stream composition was 96%
ethylene, 3% propylene and 1% methane by mole.

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Process design case study Physical properties

W EA EL DEE M PL IPA
M waste MW 18 46 28 74.1 16 42 60.1
Water (W)
EL recycle
DEN 1 .789 .56 .708 .609 .785
PL waste

Reactor
DEE byproduct MP 0 -114 -169 116 -182 -185 -89.5
EA product
BP 100 78.4 -103 34.6 -161 -47.7 82.5
Ethylene (EL) IPA waste
Propylene (PL)
W recycle
TC 374 243 193 193 -82 91.4 235
Methane (M)
CA waste PC 217 63 35.5 35.5 45.8 45.4 47.0

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Typical process flow sheet Separation option-1

W EL
W

EL EA
EL
EL separation reactor separation
DEE
PL DEE
EA
M
W
PL CA
M CA

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Separation option-2 Separation option-3

W EL W EL
W W

EL EA M EA
M M EL
EL separation reactor separation EL reactor separation
EL PL
PL DEE PL DEE
DEE DEE
M M
EA EA
PL W CA
IPA
CA CA M W PL
CA
M

IPA

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Formulation of Design Problem
• Normally plants are never commissioned at T,P,F
and composition at which they are designed.
• Due to these, some overdesign/contingence will
be considered.
– Too little overdesign  plant might not work
– Too much overdesign  plant will work poorly
• Factors affecting to that are
– Feed rates and compositions
– Controllers
– Erroneous design calculations
– T, P conditions variations
Selecting an alternative
• Alternative 1 Simplest solution will be expand already
running plant and project on shipping cost and storage
design.
• Alternative 2 Purchase and ship chlorine by pipeline from
nearby plant and carryout reaction in-house with ethylene
to produce VCM and HCl as byproduct.
• Alternative 3 Because large quantities of HCl is produced,
it will be available at lower cost, react it with acetylene or
ethylene and oxygen to produce VCM. But cost of
purification will be very high.
• Alternative 4 Design an electrolysis plant to electrolyze
HCl to produce H2 and Cl2 and then apply alternative 2 to
produce VCM.
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Create a problem
• Vinyl Chloride Manufacturing (VCM)
– Primary monomer for production of Vinyl
Chloride which is used in production of hard
plastic pipes and fittings.
– There is a need arise to produce about 800MT of
VCM, in gulf petrochemical unit.
– Since it is very toxic, designer has to design new
facilities to satisfy government health and safety
regulations.
First Definition
• “A process design is more than just summation
of heat and material balance calculations”.
• Chemical processes are created by integrating
principles from basic sciences — chemistry,
physics, and mathematics — with
consideration of economics, environmental
impact, and employee safety.
• Because a process plant is more like a living
organism than a machine, the process designer
plays the part of creator, not just an engineer.
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In Nutshell Process Design Involves

• Working together Project, Process and • PROCESS DEVELOPMENT & OVERALL
Instrument engineers form the Project Team. DESIGN CONSIDERATION
• This group will issues the plant’s Process • COST ESTIMATION & FACTORS AFFECTING
Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID). – Profitability and investments
• But P&ID is based on the process flow-sheet • OPTIMUM DESIGN
and brings us back to process engineer’s job. – Equipment sizing
– Controllability of plant
• Fallible humans operates plant, and the process
– Energy conservation
flow-sheet must reflect this weakness.

Control Equipment Sizing

• A process design is its control strategy.
• It serves the same function in an operating plant,
• Specification of physical size of
that, our central nervous system does in our equipments is most vital part of the
bodies.
• Process plants have a unique characteristics,
process design.
which reflects the knowledge and experience of • Inexperienced designer will oversize
the man, who designed the controls.
• An instrument engineer will decide, as whether every part of the plant and then
pneumatic or electric instrumentation will be undersize an essential flash drum or
used.
• What to control and how to control is a job of a pump, which then debottlenecks the
Chemical Engineer.
entire operation.

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Equipments to be sized Energy

• Fractionators towers • The relative arrangement of the
• Flash drum equipment for maximum energy
• Pumps efficiency and capacity is also a function
• Compressors and turbines of process engineer.
• Heat exchangers • Shall a particular pump be located
• VL/ GL/ LL Separators upstream or downstream of a heat
• Furnaces and boilers exchanger? Depends on whether phase change occurs or not
• Is it best to pre-flash crude prior to
fractionation? Yes it will reduce reboiler load

Steps in chemical process Design

• Begin with the potential opportunity.
Element of Process Design
• Design team creates and assesses a primitive problem.
• When required, team seeks to find chemicals or mixtures that have • A Process Description
designed properties and performance. – Summary of purpose of plant and how it works
• Then process creation is undertaken.
• When gross profit is favorable, a base case is developed.
• An overall unit material and energy balance
• This is a subject of part I. listing feeds and products
• In parallel, algorithmic methods are employed to find better process flow- – Physical and chemical properties of all feed,
sheets as shown in part II. intermediates and products / byproducts
• In parallel, plant wide controllability assessment is undertaken to
eliminate processes that are difficult to control as shown in part IV. • A process flow sheet showing major control
When the process looks promising, the design team carries out detailed loops
design, equipment sizing and optimization as shown in part III.
• Finally, part V focuses on the written design report and the presentation. – Quick comprehension of process in artistic way
• Accelerating Process and Product Design

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Element of Process Design Element of Process Design

• A listing of the composition and quantity of major process • A listing of pumps giving the volume to be
streams. This listing is keyed to the process flow-sheet. pumped, the vapor pressure of the fluid, and its
– List of mole fraction of all streams for future references specific gravity and viscosity.
• A line list giving the design viscosity, specific gravity,
temperature, pressure, molecular weight and pounds per – Selection of pumps.
hour of every process and utility line. – Expected specific gravity, viscosity, and vapor pressure
– During start up, a particular line may required to carry twice its data
normal flow. • Fired heater data sheets, including vaporization
– During emergency, a portion of process may be exposed to curves.
unusual high viscosity.
• Heat exchanger data sheet. – Most costly item of process plant.
– TEMA sheet should be filled up. – Maximum allowable heat flux, heat duty determines
– HT inlet, outlet temperatures, viscosity and fouling factor values. size
– Set of curves describing changes in fluid properties in
tubes

Element of Process Design Project Design Stages

• Vessel sketches showing all nozzle locations (but not necessarily
sizes) • Conception and Definition
– Distances between centerlines of all nozzles
– Note location of manholes
• Preliminary Evaluation of Economics and Market
– Details of vessel internals and operating conditions • Development of Data
– Amount and type of catalyst in reactor
– Tray spacing and packing height in absorbers or fractionation column. • Final Economics Analysis
• Tray data sheets for fractionation towers.
– Volume and densities of liquid and vapor streams • Detailed Engineering Design
– Spacing between trays and type of tray
• Compressor data showing suction and discharge condition.
• Procurement and Pilot plant study
– Suction and discharge pressure and temperature • Erection/Construction
– Ratio of specific heats
– Compressor efficiency • Startup and Trial Runs
• Production

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Can a Pilot Plant be skipped? Issues related to Process Design

• Reactor: Single Phase and single step, Homogeneous, simple type
reactors, few or no by-products are not required to go for PP But • Literature Survey Issues
in the case of highly endothermic or exothermic reactions,
heterogeneous, multistep reactions required specially designed • Environmental Issues
reactors will required to go for PP.
• Separator: accurate thermodynamic equilibrium data is sufficient
• Safety Issues
to scale up the separation equipment but extractor, drying, • Engineering Ethics
crystallization, solid handling are hybrid separations will required
study of PP. • Role of computers in process design
• Heat Transfer: most common and most important found in both
reactor and separation geometry. Standard equipment can skip the
PP study by effectively using commercial software like HTRI.
• Material transfer: solid transfer is more problematic than fluid
transfer. Single phase transfer is easy but multiphase transfer
requires the PP study.

Literature Survey Environmental Issues

• SRI Design Projects • Since 1970s, chemical industries have
transformed from secondary to primary treatment
• Encyclopedias methods of waste materials. This increased
• Handbooks and reference books loading of chemicals in atmosphere in air, water
• Indexes and land.
• Due to these, US govt. has created Environment
• Patents Protection Agency (EPA) to tight the environment
• Research Articles protection legislations.
• In India also it has started then and in Gujarat, we
have Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB).

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Environmental Issues
• Burning of fossil
• So industries have to invest more to reduce the
sources of pollution, this will increase the cost
of manufacturing and in turn, will increase the
cost of end product.
• One possible solution for this, the production
can be done in countries where pollution
control laws are not stringent and then it can
be imported at very low cost.
Environmental issues related to
Process Design
• Handling of toxic wastes
– Handling waste water and solid waste.
– Possible ways are incineration or bulk dumping in land.
– Affect the land area and ground water quality.
– One possible way is use Mass Exchange Network
• Bio-accumulated chemicals
– For chemicals like DDT and PCB
– Toxic effect on birds, animals and human
• Toxic metals and minerals
– Metals like Pb, Hg, Cd, Asbestos
– Pb based pints and toys for kids are harmful
– TEL now changed by MTBE to increase octane number
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Gas Generation Plant
fuels for power generation and
transportation
– Predominant source of power generation
– Produces several primary air pollutants
• SO2, NOx, CO2, CO, soot, ash, hydrocarbons
– Problems like acid rain (H2SO4), smog-hazes (NOx), green house gas
(CO2), volatile toxic compounds (Formaldehyde), organic gases
(CO), can affect ozone level.
– Problems can be rectified by
• Separating S from fuel before combustion
• Adjusting combustion process like reducing combustion T, Reducing
residence time of flame to reduce NOx level.
• Separating soot, ash, noxious from effluent gases
• Reacting effluent gas in catalytic convertor
• Use algae to consume large quantity of CO2 in flue gases
– Cost of reducing combustion products should be less than the cost of
removing them from fuel.
Environmental issues related to
Process Design
• The need to retrofit existing plants and to design
environmentally sound plants has required
chemical engineers in far more proficient in
accounting for environmentally related factors.
– Reaction path ways to reduce byproduct toxicity
– Reducing and reusing wastes
– Avoiding non-routine events
– Material characterization
– Design Objective and optimization
– Regulations and intangible cost
– Properties of Dilute solutions
– Properties of electrolyte solutions
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Environmental issues related to
Process Design
• Reaction path ways to reduce byproduct toxicity
– Should be considered during preliminary process
synthesis.
– Search for an alternatives, if not then reject design
• Reducing and reusing wastes
– Applied not only for unreacted but also to products
and byproducts
– Anticipate lifecycle of products and byproducts
– Paying attention to waste market, so as to select
appropriate waste quality
– It is important to plan on producing segregated waste
and avoid over mixing of waste streams so as
treatment becomes easier.
Environmental issues related to
Process Design
• Design Objective and optimization
– Values of reduced pollution is not easily quantified by
economic measures.
– Economic objective function subject to bound on the
concentration of solutes and waste stream (Hard/Soft)
• Regulations and intangible cost
– Cost of liability when a plant is found to be delinquent
in satisfying regulation, this is in connection the cost
of legal fees, public relation loss, delayed incurred
when environment groups stage protests.
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Environmental issues related to
Process Design
• Avoiding non-routine events
– Reducing possibility of accidents and spill with their adverse
environment consequences to reduce number of transient
operations, clean up periods, and catalyst regeneration cycles.
– Process should be easily controlled at or near a steady state
with reliable controllers and effective fault-detection sensors.
• Material characterization
– Use effective and rapid methods for measurement or
deduction of waste chemicals in either gaseous or liquid
stream below the limits of environment regulations.
– One has to study effect of concentration on toxicity.
– One has to plan recycle of chemicals – sometimes waste also.
– One should know exact composition range and flow rate of
the stream.
Environmental issues related to
Process Design
• Properties of Dilute solutions
– Most pollutants in the effluent and purge streams are present in dilute
concentration.
– Understand the impact of concentration on the kinetics of this species on
environment.
– Example: rate of reaction of CO2 with NOX to produce O3 and other
byproducts are extremely important to study green house effect.
• Properties of electrolyte solutions
– Many inorganic compounds dissociates into ionic species like mineral acids,
bases and salts.
– In dilute stream one has to study only kinetics of reaction but in strong
solutions one has to consider effect of interaction of ions with each other and
also parallel and series reactions.
– This occurs in inorganic industries (NaHCO3, NaCO3), paper and pulp
industries (Strong solutions for washing), in aqueous waste associated with
manufacturing of electronic materials (silicon wafers, integrated circuits,
photovoltaic films).
– One has to detailed study of properties of ionic species and thermo physical
properties.
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Environmental Design
Safety Issues
• Fire and Safety
• Toxic Release and Dispersion Model

Project
• Safety Relief Devices
• Hazard Analysis and Risk Accessement
• Material and Safety Datasheet

Chemical Process Design

Role of Computers How do we go about the design of a chemical process?

• Spread sheets
• Symbolic Mathematics
• Numerical Mathematics
• ODE and PDE solvers
• Optimization
• Bifurcation analysis
• Aspen Plus/HYSYS
• HTRI
• CHEMCAD
• PRO II
• Gproms
• Fluent + Gambit

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Chemical Process Design Chemical Process Design

How do we go about the design of a chemical process? How do we go about the design of a chemical process?

Chemical Process Design Chemical Process Design

How do we go about the design of a chemical process? How do we go about the design of a chemical process?

Finished Process ?
UNFORTUNATELY
This is inefficient in energy use!
So let’s consider heat recovery
to reduce the energy
consumption

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Chemical Process Design Chemical Process Design

How do we go about the design of a chemical process? How do we go about the design of a chemical process?

Some streams need to be cooled down Recover heat between a stream that needs to
and some need to be heated up be cooled down and one that needs to be
heated up

Chemical Process Design Chemical Process Design

How do we go about the design of a chemical process? How do we go about the design of a chemical process?

··· and more heat recovery completes the design different possibilities for heat integration

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Chemical Process Design Chemical Process Design

How do we go about the design of a chemical process? How do we go about the design of a chemical process?

Changing the reactor dictates Changing the reactor dictates

a different separation and recycle problem a different separation and recycle problem

Chemical Process Design Chemical Process Design

How do we go about the design of a chemical process? How do we go about the design of a chemical process?

··· leads to a different separation system and different heat recovery

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Introduction to Process Integration

• Process integration represents an important
branch of process engineering initiated in the late
1970’s.
What is Process • It refers to the system-oriented, Thermodynamics
Integration? based, integrated approaches to the analysis,
synthesis and retrofit of process plants.
• The goals of process integration are
– To integrate the use of materials and energy, and
– To minimize the generation of emissions and wastes.

Tools for Process Integration Process Integration

Built on three basic concepts
Process Integration • Consider the big picture first by looking at the whole
manufacturing process as an integrated system of
interconnected processing units as well as process, utility
and waste streams.
• Apply process-engineering principles, such as
Pinch Technology Mathematical Optimization thermodynamics and mass and energy balances, to key
process steps to establish a priori the attainable
performance targets on the use of materials and energy and
the generation of emissions and wastes (e.g., the minimum
Terminal Mass Linear Non-Linear utility consumptions, the minimum CO2 and NOx emission
Pinch Integration Programming Programming levels, the minimum freshwater requirement, etc.).
• Finalize the details of process design and retrofit later to
realize the established performance targets.
Water Pinch
Technology

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What Is Process Integration? What Is Process Integration?

First choose a series of processing steps Then connect these processing steps together

To give an integrated manufacturing system that is:

Environmentally acceptable; Safe; Profitable; Operable

What Is Process Integration?

First Process Integration:

Onion Model for Chemical

Then Process Simulation: Process Integration

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Onion Model Onion Model

Start With The Reactor Then Add Separation
System and Connect
Up Recycle

Onion Model Onion Model

Dictate The Need for
External Utilities

Recover Heat Where

Possible

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Hierarchy of Process Design Process Integration with Heat Recovery

Reactor Design ➢ Process Integration:
⇓
• Using process streams to heat and cool other streams
Separation
☞ Hot streams gives off energy to another streams
System Design
☞ Cold streams absorbs energy from another streams
⇓
HEN Design
⇓
➢ Additional heating or cooling is done using utility streams
Utility
System Design

➢ Heat recovery reduces utility requirements , and therefore

operating costs

Process design is strongly coupled with Heat Exchanger Networks

Process Integration with Heat Recovery Process Integration with Heat Recovery
Ex: The Front End of A Specialty Chemicals Process Ex: The Front End of A Specialty chemicals Process

Six heat transfer The alternative

units (i.e. heaters, flow-sheet uses
coolers and only four heat
exchangers) are transfer units and
used and the energy the utility heating
requirements are load is reduced by
1,722 kW for about 40% (1,068
heating and 654 kW kW) with cooling
for cooling. no longer required.

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HAD Process Overall Process PBD

Hydrodealkylation of Toluene to Benzene
CH4
H2 Recycle

H2, CH4,C6H6,C6H5CH3
Diphenyle
These are homogeneous reactions occurring at 500psia and
between 1150F to 1300F.
Below 1150F reaction is too slow and above 1300F hydro-
cracking takes place.
C6H5CH3 Recycle
Hydrogen is supplied in excess to prevent coking in ratio of 5/1.
Outlet stream must be quenched to 1150F to avoid coking in
HE. Distillation
Distillation Distillation

Count the number

of heat exchangers
in this PFD: 13

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Alternative I
Energy Integration
• The process shown above has some heating and
cooling requirement, and each of them is done in
separate heat exchanger using external mediums.
• The Heat exchanger network gives best energy
load for any process plant.
• To apply this procedure one should know flow
rate, composition and inlet and outlet
temperatures of each stream.
• The alternative flow-sheet is shown in figure.

Alternative II Alternative III

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Alternative IV Alternative V

Alternative VI
Energy Efficient Flow-sheet

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Distillation Train Distillation Train

• If one can recollect, there were three distillation
columns in main diagram.
• Can we avoid one of the distillation columns
maintaining the integrity of the process?
• Three options:
– Removing third distillation column and let Diphenyl
build up in reactor
– Side stream toluene in benzene-toluene- diphenyl split
– Side stream benzene in methane-Benzene split

Can one do integration of following

flow-sheet?

Energy integrated Ethyl Benzene plant

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Ethanol Synthesis Benzoic Acid Production

Phthalic acid synthesis energy diagram

Manufacturing of Cellulose

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Overall Hierarchy of Process

• Whether Batch or Continuous
What will be next? • Input-Output structure of flow-sheet
• Recycle structure of flow-sheet
• Vapor and liquid recovery system
• Heat exchanger network

References
• Systematic methods of chemical process design by
Biegler, Grossmann, Westerberg
– Chapter 1
• Product and process design principles by Seider and
Seader
– Chapter 1 & 2
• Conceptual design of chemical processes by
J.M.Douglas
– Chapter 1 and 3
• Chemical Process Design and Integration by Robin
Smith
– Chapter 1 and 6

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