Project Synopsis

Manage the equipment design effort and complete equipment specification packages for a new specialty alcohol derivative plant to be built in India.

Project Summary

SPECIALTY CHEMICAL PROCESS EQUIPMENT DESIGN AND SPECIFICATION

The client owns and operates a major chemical manufacturing facility that produces organic specialty and non-specialty chemical products.  Process Engineering Associates (PROCESS) was contracted by the client’s corporate engineering group to manage the equipment design effort and complete equipment specification packages for a specialty alcohol derivative process.  The client currently owns and operates two similar processes and was developing a basic engineering package for sale to a foreign operating company.  More specifically, PROCESS was asked to: (1) lead the equipment design effort by managing the development of equipment specifications both by PROCESS and the client’s own engineering staff, and (2) prepare specification packages for all of the distillation columns, reactors, heat exchangers, decanters, storage tanks, filters, and agitators for this process.  The client provided PROCESS with drawings and specifications for equipment in their existing facility to assist in the development of 80% of the equipment specifications; however, about half of this equipment has different capacities and had to be redesigned.

Equipment design and specification activities included the following:

  • Using hydraulic information provided by the client to size and design distillation columns
  • Using heat curves provided by the client to size and design heat exchangers using HTRI software
  • Using heat and material balances provided by the client to size and design reactors, decanters, storage tanks, filters, and agitators.
  • Developing sketches of the equipment, including elevation and nozzle orientation sketches to show nozzle locations, vessel internals and feed device sketches and numerous additional detail sketches
  • Preparing detailed equipment specifications.

Project management activities included the following:

  • Developing and regularly updating an equipment list which includes equipment sizes, design temperatures and pressures, the status of the equipment, and supplier requirements
  • Assigning equipment to be designed to both PROCESS and the client’s own engineering group employees
  • Correcting P&IDs to match the equipment specifications
  • Communicating process changes to equipment designers
  • Reviewing all equipment specifications
  • Completing a study to determine how several distillation columns and the associated equipment could be modified to be used in a second service.

A total of 142 equipment specification packages were completed by PROCESS during this project.

Industry Type

  • Specialty chemical manufacturing

Utilized Skills

  • Distillation column design
  • Chemical process equipment sizing
  • Chemical process equipment specifications
  • Project management

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