Chemical and BioChemical

Processes
History of the Chemical Engineering Profession
and
Introduction to Chemical/Biochemical
Processes

Development of Large Scale

Chemicals Processing
The need for large scale chemicals processing which
necessitated the building of large scale plants originated in
Europe, mostly in England, following the Industrial Revolution
mainly to abate the hunger and other very basic needs of
the masses. That is to produce more synthetic nitrogen
fertilizers (NH4NO3, etc), some acids(H2SO4, HNO3, HCL, etc.)
and alkali materials (NaOH, KOH, etc) needed for basic needs.
Initially mechanical engineers built and ran these plants with
the aid of industrial/applied chemists. The profession of
Chemical Engineering evolved as the need for people who can
ably handle both of these functions efficiently evolved, and
the need for the formal education of such people became
evident.
2

What is a Process?
Very generally, a Process may be defined
as A group of physical/chemical operations
designed to transform the physical and/or
chemical nature of matter used as raw
materials to obtain the desired product(s)
Thus, a Chemical/Biochemical Process
transforms the process raw materials into
the desired product(s) via a series of
physical operations and
chemical/biochemical reactions.
3

A Simple Depiction of Chemical/Biochemical Processes

Technical Know-how
Desired product(s)
Money
Man power
Raw Materials

Energy

By-product(s)

Waste
product(s)

Auxiliary chemicals
(solvents, adsorbents, catalysts, etc.)

Definition of a Chemical/Biochemical
Process
Technical Know-how
Desired product(s)
Money
Man power
Raw Materials

Physical
and
Chemical
Operatio
ns

Energy

By-product(s)

Waste
product(s)

Auxiliary chemicals
(solvents, adsorbents, catalysts, etc.)

Founding of the
Chemical Engineering Profession and
Initiation of the Chemical Engineering Curricula

For all intents and purposes the chemical engineering profession began in 1888. While,
the term "chemical engineer" had been floating around technical circles throughout the
1880's, there was no formal education for such a person. The "chemical engineer" of those
years was either a mechanical engineer who had gained some knowledge of chemical
processing equipment, a chemical plant foreman with a lifetime of experience but little
education, or an applied chemist with knowledge of large scale industrial chemical reactions.
Enter George Davis, a heretofore unremarkable Alkali Inspector from the "Midland" region of
England. Throughout his long career Davis in his daily rounds had been through many of the
chemical plants in the region. Inside, he was given intimate access to monitor pollution levels
as necessitated by the Alkali Works Act of 1863. These rounds included the Lead-Chamber, Le
Blanc, and Solvay processing plants which had undergone a revolution due to engineering
efforts. This revolution in operation clarified the necessity for a new branch of engineering
that was equally comfortable with both applied chemistry and traditional engineering.
In 1880 George Davis acted upon these ideas and proposed the formation of a "Society of
Chemical Engineers. While the attempt was unsuccessful, he continued to promote chemical
engineering undaunted. In 1904 George Davis published the first Handbook of Chemical
Engineering.

In 1884 Davis became an independent consultant applying and synthesizing

the chemical knowledge he had accumulated over the years. In 1887 he
molded his knowledge into a series of 12 lectures on chemical engineering,
which he presented at the Manchester Technical School. This chemical
engineering course was organized around individual chemical operations, later
to be called "unit operations.

Davis explored these operations empirically and presented operating practices

employed by the British chemical industry. Because of this, some felt his
lectures merely shared English know-how with the rest of the world.

However, his lectures went far in convincing others that the time for chemical
engineering had arrived. Some of these people lived across the Atlantic, i.e. the
U.S.A., where the need for chemical engineering was also real and immediate.
An effort in 1880, by George Davis, to unite these varied professionals through
a "Society of Chemical Engineers" proved unsuccessful.

However, this muddled state of affairs was changed in 1888, when Professor
Lewis Norton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) introduced
"Course X" (ten), thereby uniting chemical engineers through a formal degree.
Other schools, such as the University of Pennsylvania and Tulane University,
quickly followed suit adding their own four year chemical engineering programs
7
in 1892 and 1894 respectively.

Phases in the Development of the USA

type Chemical Engineering curricula
Lets start this part of the lecture by the words of Prof. Olaf A. Hougen (U. Wisconsin,
Madison) who in 1965s wrote Sixty years ago Chemical Engineering was 99 % an art
and 1 % a science ! (The Chemical Engineer, 191, CE 222 (1965)) . His estimate for
the percentage of science was about 10 for 1960s.
It is a fact that art is a part of many professions, such as engineering and medicine.
Even though people professionally or otherwise engaged in areas of art like music,
painting, sculpture, literature, etc. may not accept it.
The reason for the art part of, lets say engineering and medicine is that the
systems they attempt to deal with are extremely complex to quantify in exact detail
to obtain singular solutions to the problems, or cases, that are dealt with. However,
as the related sciences develop and supply additional knowledge which can be
quantitatively expressed in detail, the art portion decreases. As you would guess
the quantitative expression of these cases needs developed mathematical skills. The
terminology art includes intuition which may be partially based on experience
in the field, but not totally.

 For this, Prof. Hougen writes Successful solutions to industrial

problems depend upon engineering judgement and experiment
with the unknown and undocumented science as well as
principles that have already been well established. This is the
principle distinction between the scientist and engineer.
That is why I believe that an Engineers job to make 2 + 2 grater than 4.
For scientists 2 + 2 = 4!

For the developments and improvements in the Chemical

engineering curriculum in the following years Prof. Hougen states:
These (curriculum) changes required the struggle of instructors
against vested interests; they meant the sacrifice of descriptive
courses of great personal pride and familiarity; they imposed
upon the chemical engineering staff the responsibility of
mastering and teaching the scientific background of the
profession.

 What Prof. Hougen means in this remark is that, at the founding of the profession there were
experts in various industries, or chemical factories, who were very proud of their
expertise, and they neither wanted to pass this expertise freely on to the new-comers
freely, or well-commed the systemization of such knowledge transfer. A few simple examples
may be that some people were experts in cement industries, some in paper, some in sugar,
some in fertilizers, some in sulfuric acid, some in nitric acid, etc. . The fact is that even today,
after all the developments in the profession experts exist in industries, for the basic reason
that some of the phenomena in all industries have not yet been fully described in terms of
available scientific knowledge.
So in 1915 Dr. Arthur D. Little (a MIT educated chemist with industrial experience), came
around and coined the word unit operations for the physical operations included in all
types of chemical processing industries. This concept greatly helped the Chemical
Engineering education to have a more-or-less unified basis.
A similar concept, i.e. Unit Processes, to classify and standardize the operations including
chemical reactions was also proposed but did find as strong an acceptance, since the
variations among the chemical reactions of the same type were probably as many as the
applications, and furthermore these unit processes, as suggested, e.g. sulfonation,
hydrogenation, nitrogenation, nitration, etc. also included unit-operations like distillation,
extraction, etc. somehow considered specific for the process.

10

 This classification of the unit operations was followed by the many efforts to study
and model these operations. These many efforts were mainly based on those
operations which included the fluids, i.e. the gas and the liquid phases of matter,
since the behavior of matter in these phases were much easier to describe than the
solid phase, with the available nearly precise thermodynamic models, such as the
perfect/ideal gas law, the Van der Waals equation, etc., even though unit
operations including solids, such as filtration were not fully left out, but the models
remained to be quite empirical.
The earliest examples of models were either totally graphical or models expressed
graphically but based on simple (simplified) mathematical models. Some examples
for these might be the McCabe-Thiele procedure for binary distillation, early models
for heat-exchanger design, etc. Naturally the problems that could be solved with
these early models were quite simple and at times valid for idealized behavior.
However such models of late 1920s and 1930s, laid the way towards a much better
understanding of the unit-operation(s) involved. These were followed by the more
detailed and realistic models, such as multi-component separation methods, nonideal separations, which were ably handled with the more developed mathematical
methods which were then available. The introduction of digital computers to chemical
engineering teaching, research and practice (early to mid 1950s) made the
extremely tedious solutions of these methods based on hand calculations (or via
mechanical calculators) highly practical and very useful.

11

During this period, i.e. the first half of the 1900s there was another modeling
activity directed towards the catalytic reactors, mostly the catalytic reactors with
solid and solid supported catalysts. The mechanisms of such reactions have to
include the inclusion of the adsorptive effects of the solid catalysts on the reaction
mechanisms. Professors Hougen and Watson, both of U. Wisconsin (Madison) were
both active and leaders in the development and application of such models.
Going back to developments in the study of Unit Operations, until mid 1950s the
unit operations were studied separately as fluid flow, absorption, distillation, heat
transfer, etc. by various popular texts such as Badger & Banchero, Brown, Faust,
etc. However, in mid 1950s the first edition of the text Transport Phenomena by
Professors Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot was introduced. In this text the authors, all
from U. Wisconsin (Madison) noted that the mechanisms of transport for
momentum (fluid flow), heat (heat transfer) and mass (mass transfer absorption,
distillation, extraction, adsorption, etc.) have common bases and could be and
should be handled in a unified manner. This concept enabled the chemical
engineers to suggest much more comprehensive mathematical models and
solution procedures.

12

At about the same time as Professors Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot,

Professors Amundson and Aris (U. Minnesota) introduced, among
others, the extensive use of matrices in the solution of complex
mathematical models suggested for the use of complex and detailed
systems. Amundson and Aris also emphasized the use of many
dimensionless parameters in modeling chemical systems thus
fortifying the attempt to show that various unit operations, as well as
the transport mechanisms in the reactive systems, could be analyzed
using similar bases.
So, since then the modeling of chemical engineering systems could
be considered basically solved, but not naturally complete! New, and
more detailed and comprehensive models are continuously
suggested and they are diligently solved mostly by the use of digital
computers using highly developed numerical tecniques.

13

Now that we have made some introductory remarks about the

mathematical models of the individual operations (unit operations or
chemical reactors) used in chemical processes lets us question ourselves
where and how are these mathematical models used?

Why are mathematical models they so important?

One answer may be that, if one has a reliable mathematical model one can
learn a lot about the system by generating data via calculations, which
are very fast and cheap, versus doing a lot of expensive and time
consuming experimentation. However, one should not forget that the basis
of good models and reliable model parameter values are highly dependent
on good experimental data in addition to a good understanding of the
system.

The mathematical models are used to simulate the operations and design
the equipment to run the desired operations. Furthermore, they are also
used in the optimization of the design and operation of the equipment and
processes in question. Simulation and design packages prepared for single
pieces of processing equipment to run mostly on digital computers were
used in the chemicals processing industries starting from late 1950s.
These packages were then mostly company owned.

14

 However, we have to note here that equipment used in chemical processes,

in general, are highly non-linear in their behavior. Thus, if the input of one
equipment is the product of another equipment, both equipment being nonlinear in themselves, the resulting system, even though is comprised of just
two equipment, is very highly non-linear. The non-linearity of a system
made up of 10, 50 or hundreds of different processing equipment coupled to
each other have extremely, and extremely high degree of non-linearity.
An engineers main duty is to design and operate profitable chemical plants,
which are very complex systems. Thus, the modeling and optimization of
such complex systems is a very demanding job.
So the next big step of development in Chemical Engineering was the
development of FlowSheeting packages. By early 1960s chemicals
processing companies with rather advanced research groups supporting the
plant operations were using simulation/design software targeting single
equipment or single unit operations such as a heat exchanger or a reactor.
Simulators for distillation packages including a column and the attached
reboiler and condenser, etc., may be a few columns attached to each other,
were also available.

15

 Towards the end of 1960s The Monsanto Company embarked on a novel

project called the FLOWTRAN project. The aim of this project was to develop a
computer simulation package which could include a large number of
processing equipment that may constitute a whole process. The package was
limited for the fluid handling continuous flow systems using the FORTRAN
coding language, popular at the time scientific coding, thus the name
FLOWTRAN.
FLOWTRAN was first developed for in-house (only Monsanto) use, but it was
later made available to other users, including universities, at a price.
FLOWTRAN was then followed by other commercially available packages, e.g.
PROCESS, etc. All of these packages had their own ThermoPhysical Property
Estimation Packages in them, but also allowed the users to insert their own
property estimation correlations if they wanted to.
Further, the development of the AIChE Thermophysical Properties package
lifted a big burden from the developers of simulators, and they were able to
concentrate on the equipment modeling and flowsheeting aspects pf the
simulators.
16

 In about 1973-74, Prof. Larry Evans of MIT was able to secure funding for the
development of the ASPEN package. ASPEN package, still in use today, and
probably still the most comprehensive of all existing packages, is quite general,
and today can even handle systems including solids, electrolytes, etc.
Nowadays, the number of publicly available simulation/design packages is very
high, and their prices very low as compared to 1970s. Almost all ChE students use
at least one before graduation. N Boazii University we have been using
ChemCAD in the past many years, mainly for the Design courses.
These software packages, which can simulate chemicals processing systems
including large numbers of non-linearly behaving equipment to attain converged
solutions is a very difficult job. Even a more difficult chore is to obtain this
converged solution in very short calculation times, since multiple simulations are
needed to obtain optimal operating and design values.
Prof. Sargent and his group at Imperial College (London) was one of the most
influential and leading researcher and teacher of many important people who have
contributed and are still contributing to this effort of flow-sheeting of highly
complex systems . Professors Westerberg and Grossman of Carnegie-Mellon
University, among many others, also had very meaningful contributions to this
field, as well as to obtaining optimal designs in such very complex systems.
17

 Process Control is also a very important subject in chemical plants as well as in

chemical engineering education. The variables that have to be controlled are Level,
Temperature, Pressure, Flow Rate and at times concentration of the material(s) in
the equipment. These controls are made to obtain the quality of product(s) needed,
as well as to run the plant in a safe manner, and also with the minimum loss of
materials.
In the very early years of the chemical industry on/off controls were very popular.
However, these developed into more complex controllers, such as proportional (P),
proportional-integral (PI) and proportional-integral-derivative (PID). Nowadays
predictive procedures based on the statistical analysis of the system behavior are
used.
We have to note here again that mathematical models are the basis of all
controlling strategies.
Finally, in comparison to chemical processes, biochemical systems also are
modeled, designed and operated similarly, but in practice they are harder to deal
with, simply for the reason that the species involved in such systems have life, i.e.
they are living species. Thus, they have to be treated with more care in all
respects, since the living species may die, or perform undesirably, producing
useless products, if not properly treated during actual operations.
18

Chemical Engineering in Continental

Europe, i.e. Germany, etc.

As far as I know, in the earlier years the education of

Industrial Chemists, i.e. chemists educated more towards
running the chemical plants, was more popular, probably
with the exception of German departments of
Verfahrenstechnik (Processing Tecnique/Chemical
Engineering). However, later near mid 1900s, some French
Universities, e.g. University of Nantes, also had U.S. type
ChE departments.
Nowadays, the USA type of ChE curricula is quite prevalent
in almost all countries.

19

The Basic Architecture of a Typical

Process Simulation/Design Software Package

20

Simulation vs. Design:

Knowns and Unknowns!

Simulation
Feed(s)
(Rate, conditions
and
specifications)
Equipment/Proces
s (Specifications &
Processing
Conditions)
Product(s)
(Rate, conditions
and specifications

(given-known)

(given-known)
?
(unknown; to be
determined)

Design

(given-known)

?
(unknown; to be
determined)

(given-known)

21

Equipment and Process Design using Simulation

Software: An Iterative Procedure

It is evident from the above chart that the simulation and design requirements are
different. In design, the equipment and operating specifications of an non-existing
equipment or process is to be determined via calculations to produce a product of set
specifications at the desired rate. In simulation, however, the equipment and its
operating conditions are known in detail, and the calculations aim to determine the
product rate and properties. Simulations can be directly performed using process
simulators like ASPEN, ChemCad, and the like. The global architecture of such packages
were given in pg.16, earlier. Design calculations, however, are generally done in an
iterative manner, as noted below:
1. To start the iteration, first assume a flowsheet and equipment specifications and
operating conditions and run a simulation.
2. Compare the results of this iteration with the product rates and product
specifications, as required in the design problem.
3. If the simulation results and the design requirements are acceptably close, you
have obtained a feasible solution.
4. If the achieved simulation results and the design requirements do not match,
using previous experience and engineering judgement adjust the flowsheet and/or
the equipment specifications and/operating conditions, and run a new simulation,
i.e. iterate.
5. These iterations will (should) eventually converge and a technically feasible
design will be achieved.
22

The components of Chemical/Biochemical Processes

Technical Know-how
Money
Man power
Raw Materials
Energy

Unit
Operation
s
&
Reactor(s)
Chemical/
Biochemical

Desired product(s)

By-product(s)
Waste
product(s)

Auxiliary chemicals
solvents, adsorbents, catalysts, etc.)
Reactions

23

 Process INPUTS:
Technical Know-how
Money
Man power
Raw Materials
Auxiliary chemicals, i.e. solvents, adsorbents, etc., and
catalysts
Energy
Process OUTPUTS:
Desired products
By-product(s)
Waste product(s)
24

What are the building stones of

Chemical Processes?
As you would guess, building stones of chemical/biochemical processes are various unit
operations, i.e. physical operations, and in many cases some operations based on
chemical/biochemical reactions. The fact is that there many processes which do not contain a
single chemical/biochemical reaction, whereas no process exists without at least one unit
operation. For example, one has to transport two or more materials, i.e. move, pump, etc., from
one point to another and probably mix them in a bottling plant.
So, lets name some unit operations:
pumping, compressing, mixing, materials transportation, creating
heating, cooling, drying, freezing, freeze drying, sieving, filtration
crystallization, evaporation, flash separations, gravity separations,
decantation
leaching, extraction, absorption, membrane separations (!!)
simple and complex distillations, azeotropic and extractive distillation
reactive distillation (!!!),
zone-refining, adsorption, chromatographic separations, etc.

vacuum (!)

25

Whereas, some basic chemical reaction types may be:

cracking (thermal or catalytic),
polymerization (many kinds)
hydrogenation, de-hydrogenation,
alkylation,
aromatization
de-sulfurization, de-nitrogenation,
sulfonation, nitration, chlorination
fermentations (many, many kinds), etc., etc.
Some of these reactions may be non-catalytic, some are catalyzed in various ways
by many, many kinds of catalysts!

So, now we can replace the question mark ? in the PROCESS by

those mentioned in the above lists.

26

 So, a Chemical/BioChemical process may be defined as a unique

combination, REPEAT: UNIQUE COMBINATION, of various unit
operations and chemical reactions to obtain a set of desired
products from a set of raw materials at specified processing
conditions using specified solvents and/or catalysts, as need be.
When one thinks that each of these basic operations (physical
and chemical) are designed to run in many different types of
equipment, in different modes of operation (batch, continuous,
cyclic), under different operating condition (T & P and
concentrations), in different physical phases, with different
catalysts, different solvents, etc. it is quite easy to guess that
the number of possible variations would be extremely large.
Every unique combination may be called a different PROCESS!

27

Now a different and non-technical

aspect of Chemical Engineering

Why are Chemical/BioChemical

plants built ???

28

 Chemical and BioChemical plants are

built to

MAKE/GENERATE MONEY!

29

PROCESS PROFITABILITY ?
Profitability of a Process =
(Sum of all income from the sale of the
desired products, by-products and
wastes)
( - ) (minus)
(Sum of all costs for all inputs, i.e. raw
materials, energy, etc., including the
cost of invested capital)
30

Clarification of a Few Probably New

Concepts!

Im quite sure that you are already familiar with of the

Process Inputs and Process Outputs shown in the figure
above attepting to depict a Process. However, there a few
of them with which probably some or most of you are not
very familiar. These are:
* Technical know-how,
* Patents, and
* Process and Product Licences and Licensing.

Before we proceed further let us try to clarify what these

mean and how
do they relate to Chemical/Biochemical
Processes in particular and to Chemical Engineering
practice, in general.
31

What is meant by
Technical Know-How?
Technical know-how is made up of hundreds,
and at times thousands, of pieces of information
necessary to handle, process and produce the
products in a chemicals processing plant, as
well as all the details of designing, constructing,
running, controlling, cleaning, repairing,
dismantling, starting-up, shutting-down of the
process, materials handling and storing, etc.
related to the chemicals processing plant.
Some of these information may be patented,
but never all!
32

How to acquire Technical KnowHow?

Generate via in-house research
and/or experience
Buy a license from a vendor with
proven record
Buy the company which has the
know-how
Copy, if you can, but be aware of the
law if it is patented!
33

What is a Patent?
A patent is a license of ownership,
issued by a sovereign state or a group
of states (i.e. EU), if the patent is
granted, which certifies that the
knowledge stated in the patent belongs
to the Patent Holder(s) for a specified
period of time (15-20 years) in the area
controlled and administered by the
sovereign authority, i.e. the state.
34

Types of Patents in the Chemicals

Processing Industries

Process patents
Equipment patents
Formulation/Product patents
Use patents
Procedure patents
Catalyst patents
etc.,
35

Advantages/Disadvantages of
applying for a patent
Advantage: If the patent is granted,
you are the legal owner of the
declared knowledge for a given
period in a specified region.
Disadvantage: You have made your
secrets public.

36

Are all Process/Product Licences

Patented?
NO!
Probably very few are fully patented,
meaning that in very few of these all
of the necessary details are
explained in the related patent, even
if the license is covered by a
patent or patents.

37

Modes of Operation of
Chemical/Biochemical Plants
Batch (non-steady state)
Cyclic (non-steady state)
Continuous (assumed steady state
during normal operation)
Mixed (plants having
continuous/batch/cyclic operations)

38

How are Chemical Processes

Depicted?
Chemical/BioChemical processes are depicted by Process Flow
Diagrams/Sheets (PFDs) and Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs)
Process Flow Diagrams/Sheets (PFDs) are generally of two main types:
Qualitative - Show the basic operations and equipment,
sometimes only as a box, also showing flow of materials and may show
some processing conditions.
Quantitative Show all of the information given by the Qualitative
Flow Sheets, but also show the more equipment detail and processing
conditions (T&P), flow-rates of materials in detail (concentrations)
preferably in a spread-sheet format.
Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs) Show quite
detailed equipment, piping and instrumentation (measuring and control)
information on the drawing.

39

Depictions of a process via PFDs and a PID in

increasing levels of information content

In the following pages youll see various depictions of the

same process, i.e. benzene production, as qualitative and
quantitative PFDs, as well as a PID of a section of the
process as borrowed from (Turton, et. al, 3rd. Ed.). Please
note that each of the following depictions give us somewhat
different types of information about the same process, and
each depiction should be considered to be useful in its own
realm.

40

An Example Qualitative Process Flow Diagram/Sheet

(PFD)

41

An Example Qualitative Process Flow Diagram/Sheet

(PFD)

42

An example Quantitative Process Flow Diagram (PFD)

with the process information given as a Spread Sheet

43

An example Piping and Instrumentation Diagram

(P&ID) of a Catalytic Cracker in a Petroleum Refinery

44

The PID of the Distillation section of the Catalytic

Cracking Unit in a Petroleum Refinery

45