Process Design Experts: “So, how many methyl-ethyl-wonderchemicalate plants have you designed anyway? We need Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to design this process.”
Man, have we heard that before. No doubt, if you can find a whole design team of SMEs, that is normally a good way to go. But if methyl-ethyl-wonderchemicalate plants are hot, good luck getting that firm that has designed them all. If they are cold, that company won’t likely exist any more or never did. And there is one more thing…. We recently visited a specialty chemical plant that had hired an engineering firm that had designed (what they thought) was the exact same process before. Unfortunately they failed to take into account a small raw material change – and the new plant does not work 🙁 So SMEs are not always the best way to go.
Instead of looking for SMEs, why not hire some PDEs (Process Design Experts)? We have designed hundreds of processes, and for the majority of these designs, we were looking at chemistry that was new to us. As PDEs, we have learned a number of things that allow us to effectively design a process without having to have years of experience with the specific process chemistry. Some of these include: