Process design

Process design documents serve to define the design and they ensure that the design components fit together. They are useful in communicating ideas and plans to other engineers involved with the design, to external regulatory agencies, to equipment vendors and to construction contractors.

In order of increasing detail, process design documents include:

• Block flow diagrams (BFD): Very simple diagrams composed of rectangles and lines indicating major material or energy flows.
• Process flow diagrams (PFD): Typically more complex diagrams of major unit operations as well as flow lines. They usually include a material balance, and sometimes an energy balance, showing typical or design flowrates, stream compositions, and stream and equipment pressures and temperatures.
• Piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&ID): Diagrams showing each and every pipeline with piping class (carbon steel or stainless steel) and pipe size (diameter). They also show valving along with instrument locations and process control schemes.
• Specifications: Written design requirements of all major equipment items.

Process designers typically write operating manuals on how to start-up, operate and shut-down the process. They often also develop accident plans and projections of process operation on the environment.

Documents are maintained after construction of the process facility for the operating personnel to refer to. The documents also are useful when modifications to the facility are planned.

A primary method of developing the process documents is process flowsheeting.

There are several considerations that need to be made when designing any chemical process unit. Design conceptualization and considerations can begin once product purities, yields, and throughput rates are all defined.

Objectives that a design may strive to include:

• Throughput rate
• Process yield
• Product purity

Constraints include:

• Capital cost: the amount of budget or investment to construct end to end process.
• Available space: the area of the land to build the plant.
• Safety concerns: consideration towards risk analysis on industrial accidents or hazardous chemicals.
• Environmental impact and projected effluents and emissions
• Waste production/recycling: manage waste produced as side product of the process for not to harm the surroundings.
• Operating and maintenance costs: represent the variable cost of the operational of the plant.

Other factors that designers may include are:

• Reliability
• Redundancy
• Flexibility
• Anticipated variability in feed stock and allowable variability in product.

Designers usually do not start from scratch, especially for complex projects. Often the engineers have pilot plant data available or data from full-scale operating facilities. Other sources of information include proprietary design criteria provided by process licensors, published scientific data, laboratory experiments, and suppliers of feedstocks and utilities.

Design starts with process synthesis - the choice of technology and combinations of industrial units to achieve goals. More detailed design proceeds as other engineers and stakeholders sign off on each stage: conceptual to detailed design.

Simulation software is often used by design engineers. Simulations can identify weaknesses in designs and allow engineers to choose better alternatives. However, engineers still rely on heuristics, intuition, and experience when designing a process. Human creativity is an element in complex designs.

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