LECTURE 1

CONCEPT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

ECONOMIC
SUCCESS
SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTAL
PROBLEMS DAMAGE

SUSTAINABLE
ENVIRONMENTAL DEVELOPMENT SOCIAL
PROTECTION ACCEPTANCE

Ecological sustainability demands to defend the bases of the natural life and not to exceed
the stress limits of the environment.
Economic sustainability means efficient utilisation of natural resources, use of renewable
materials and alternative energies, and recycling of waste.
Social sustainability recognises the prerogatives of the free market economy based on the
social justice and the rights of individuals.
ECONOMIC 2
PROBLEMS
Process Design & the creative activity
whereby we generate ideas and then
translate them into equipment and process
for producing new materials or for
significantly upgrading the value of existing
materials
Today a designer should be concerned about the rational use of resources and the
preservation of the natural environment.

The process has to be novel, efficient, and competitive in a global business

environment, and also sustainable.

The process should

•be compact and economical in energetic consumption
•offer flexibility and ready to accept other raw materials or other specifications
of products

3
Starting from a vaguely defined problem
statement such as a customer need or a
set of experimental results, chemical
engineers can develop an understanding
of the important underlying physical
science relevant to the problem and use
this understanding to create a plan of
action and set of detailed specifications
which, if implemented, will lead to a
predicted financial outcome
 Constraints
•Fixed and invariable
•Relaxed or flexible

Design Constraints
 Design Process in General

The Design Objective (The Need) All design starts with a perceived need.
It is important to distinguish between the needs that are ‘‘must haves’’ and
those that are ‘‘should haves.’’ The ‘‘should haves’’ are those parts of the initial
specification that may be thought desirable, but that can be relaxed if required
as the design develops.
 Setting the Design Basis
• The system of units to be used.
• The national, local or company design codes that must be
followed
• Details of raw materials that are available
• Information on potential sites where the plant might be
located, including climate data, seismic conditions, and
infrastructure availability.
• Information on the conditions, availability, and price of
utility services such as fuel (gas), steam, cooling water,
process air, process water, and electricity, that will be
needed to run the process
 Generation of Possible Design Concepts
• The creative part of the design process is the generation of
possible solutions to the problem for analysis, evaluation, and
selection. In this activity, most designers largely rely on
previous experience—their own and that of others.
A. Modifications, and additions, to existing plant; usually carried out by
the plant design group.
B. New production capacity to meet growing sales demand and the
sale of established processes by contractors. Repetition of existing
designs, with only minor design changes, including designs of
vendors’ or competitors’ processes carried out to understand
whether they have a compellingly better cost of production.
C. New processes, developed from laboratory research, through pilot
plant, to a commercial process. Even here, most of the unit
operations and process equipment will use established designs.
The economic incentives of a plant project, from the conceptual
phase down to construction and commissioning

• The long way from an idea to a real process can be managed nowadays
by means of a systemic approach. This involves systematic
methodologies for designing the whole process and its sub-systems, as
reaction, separations, heat exchangers network and utilities.
9
• In the past, the development of a new process has been
described often as a kind of 'art'. The strategy, called
sometimes the engineering method, consisted of
sketching a simple but inspired flowsheet, and
improving it by successive layers of refinements, up to
final optimisation. The experience of the designer, the
expertise of the company, and the availability of pilot
data were crucial.
• Nowadays, the conceptual design of processes is
becoming increasingly an applied chemical engineering
science. Engineers having a solid scientific background
and mastering computer design tools are capable of
finding much quicker innovative ideas.
• Inspiration and expertise still play an important role, as
well as the availability of practical data.
10
 THE ORGANIZATION OF A
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING PROJECT
• Phase 1: Process design, which covers the steps from the initial selection
of the process to be used, through to the issuing of the process
flowsheets and includes the selection, specification, and chemical
engineering design of equipment. In a typical organization, this phase is
the responsibility of the Process Design Group, and the work is mainly
done by chemical engineers. The process design group may also be
responsible for the preparation of the piping and instrumentation
diagrams.
• Phase 2: Plant design, including the detailed mechanical design of
equipment; the structural, civil, and electrical design; and the
specification and design of the ancillary services. These activities will be
the responsibility of specialist design groups, having expertise in the
whole range of engineering disciplines.
Anatomy of Chemical Process
Outline of a design project

13
Each step in the design process will
not be neatly separated from the
others, nor will the sequence of
events be as clearly defined.
There will be a constant
interchange of information
between the various design sections
as the design develops, but it is
clear that some steps in a design
must be largely completed before
others can be started

Project
Organization
 Project Documentation
General correspondence within
the design group and with :
•Government departments
Drawings:
•Equipment vendors
•Flow sheets
•Site personnel
•Piping and ID diagrams
•The client
•Layout diagrams
•Plot/site plans
Calculations sheets •Equipment details
•Design calculations •Piping diagram
•Cost estimates •Architectural drawings
•Material and energy balance •Design sketches
 Project Documentation
Specification sheets
•The design basis
•Feed and products specifications
•Equipment list
•Spec sheets for equipments

Purchase orders
•Quotations
•Invoices
Health , safety and environmental
information
•Material and safety data sheets (MSDS)
•HAZOP and HAZAN documentation
•Emission assessments and permit
 System Approach
1. System is a combination of a several pieces of equipment integrated to
perform a special function.
2. Systems Analysis is the investigation of an activity, procedure, method,
technique, or business to determine what must be done and how the
operation may be best accomplished. It consists of applying mathematical
techniques to the study of systems.
3. Systems Engineering is the design of a complex interconnection system of
many elements to maximise an agreed-upon measure of the system
performance, taking into consideration all the elements related in any way
to the system.
Systems approach consists of two steps:
• Modelling, in which each element of the systems is described
and criteria for measuring performance are assigned
• Optimisation, in which adjustable parameters are set in a
manner that gives the best performance of the whole system.
17
 LIFE CYCLE MODELLING

three basic life cycle forms: waterfall, V-model and spiral

model.
These forms are suited for the design of computer-based
systems, but have larger applicability, particularly in the field
of process engineering. 18
 WATERFALL MODELLING
REQUIREMENT
DEFINITONS
SYSTEM
DESIGN
IMPLEMENTAION
AND
UNIT TEST SYSTEM
TEST

•The phases must be clearly defined such as the output of one falls cleanly into the
input of the next.
•Waterfall model indicates that the project sequencing should be organised such to
avoid feedback between phases, particularly to review the architectural (system)
design.

19
The development of an (idealised) design project can be decomposed in four major
phases: Requirements, Conceptual Design, Basic Design, and Detailed Engineering.

20
• V Cycle Model:
appropriate for managing
complex systems when
systematic validation is
necessary.
• The two basic ideas are:
1)decompose the work in a
number of tasks, and
2)separate 'specification &
design' tasks from
'production' tasks.

The left side of the cycle represents the refinement of design, while the right side
describes the assembly tasks.
In a V-cycle the project management and quality assurance are carried out together. Each
design step is verified before proceeding to the next one, and each production task is
validated against the corresponding specification task.
Here verification means that the product fulfils the quality characteristics, such as
consistency and completeness, while validation means that the product satisfies the
specifications. 21
Spiral model
The spiral life cycle model is a repeating waterfall form at
successive levels of detail. In addition, it
accommodate unforeseen events by a risk-driven
approach.
Similar tasks but with different objectives are
performed during each cycle iteration.
The inner cycles carry out more evaluation and
prototyping tasks, while the outer cycles deal with
final design.
The cumulative cost versus time is measured at each
level.

22
 CHEMICAL PRODUCTS
• Commodity or bulk chemicals: low operating cost but a
higher capital cost, produced in large volumes
• Fine chemicals: produced in small volumes and purchased on
the basis of chemical composition , purity and price
• Specialty or effect or functional chemicals: priority tends to
be given to the function then the process of manufacture

Undifferentiated Differentiated

• on the basis of their • on the basis of their effect

chemical composition alone or function
• commodity and fine • specialty chemicals
chemicals
23
 Process priorities for various
products
Design for manufacture of a commodity:
I. Relatively little product innovation, but intensive process
innovation.
II. Equipment will be designed for a specific process step

Design for manufacture of fine and specialty chemicals:

I. Selling into a market with low volume,
II. Short product life cycle,
III. Demand for a short time to market, and therefore, less time is
available for process development, with product and process
development proceeding simultaneously.

24
 NEW CHEMICAL PRODUCT
• When a new chemical product is first developed, it can often
be protected by a patent in the early years of commercial
exploitation.
• For a product to be eligible to be patented, it must be novel,
useful and unobvious.
• If patent protection can be obtained, this effectively gives
the producer a monopoly for commercial exploitation of the
product until the patent expires.
• Patent protection lasts for 20 years from the filing date of
the patent. Once the patent expires, competitors can join in
and manufacture the product

25
 Product life cycles
A rapid decrease in sales patent protection is
• Product A is a poor product lost, leading to loss of market through
that has a short life with low competition.
sales volume
• Product B is a better
product, with a longer life
cycle and higher sales
volume.
• Product C shows high sales
volume with the life of the
product extended through
reformulation of the product
• Product D is a shows a life
cycle that is typical of
commodity chemicals

Commodity chemicals, sales volume grows rapidly to a high volume, but then does
not decline and enters a mature period of slow growth
26
 Directions of Process Engineering
PROCESS ENGINEERING
Flexible processes reduction
Capital cost reduction
Raw material efficiency
Computer Integrated Manufacturing systems designates the
integration of plant operation with business activities. The
integration has to consider not only planning and accounting
tools, but also rigorous modelling technology. Process
flexibility should be seen not only in term of variable
production rate, but also in term of composition of the
feedstock.
Reduced inventory asks for the suppression of intermediate
costly storage facilities
process intensification lead to significant reduction in the
equipment size and capital costs.
High valorisation of raw materials is the factor with the
strongest impact on process efficiency. In this respect, the
breakthrough element is the chemistry. Here we mean also
the development of more active and selective catalysts.
Enhancing the selectivity of reactions can eliminate material
and energy recycles and contributes significantly to massive
cost reduction
27
Environmental performance Modem process design should aim to zeroeffluent plants
by minimisation of gaseous emissions and of process
waste, iincluding wastewater.

Energy saving Wide-range implementation of Pinch Point Analysis

Quality and control Reduction of imp urities and by-products, and

implementing advanced control systems can ensure
constant product quality

Process Safety Inherently safety can be achieved by incorporating

more non-linear analysis in process dynamics and
control