Process Design Notes

Process Design Notes - PFD Development
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PROCESS DESIGN NOTES

Process Flow Diagram Development, Material and Energy Balances
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CONTENTS
The Design Process Developing the Process Flow Diagram operational specification functional specification Material and Energy Balances material balance energy balance reconciliation
The Design Process
Design is an exercise in creativity and innovation
but always bear in mind that the objective of process plant design is:
to design a plant capable of producing a specific or a range of chemicals at the desired tonnage and at the right price
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taking into account constraints such as:

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Summary Useful References time cost budget pay-back market share contractual penalties safety at unit and plant level environmental impact, both immediate and future standards and codes of practice regulations physical and chemical limitations
Process design is therefore an optimisation problem where
the challenge is to be able to achieve the design objective in the presence of usually conflicting constraints
As a result, the final design of the plant can only be arrived at via iterative procedures. At each stage of the design, you will be required to gather relevant data and information, and to apply engineering knowledge, common sense and innovation. To facilitate the design procedure, planning is essential and this is aided by the development of the Process Flow Diagram (PFD).
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Process Flow Diagram Development
http://lorien.ncl.ac.uk/ming/dept/design/pfd.htm
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Process Flow Diagram (PFD) development is central to the design task.
The PFD depicts the process route, showing the flows of material and energy between those process units that make up the plant. It therefore
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defines the role/task and operating conditions of each section or unit in the process line gives an overall view of the process route allows an insight into the overall operability of the process provides an initial assessment of potential sources of hazards (HAZARD 2 analysis) forms the template for subsequent material and energy balances
A well thought out PFD simplifies unit process design and allows more accurate assessment of the overall viability of the plant.
There are usually two stages to developing the PFD, namely the
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operational specification
and the
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functional specification
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Operational Specification
Here, you decide upon the sections of the process that would be needed to manufacture the product. Typically, a proposed plant is divided into the following sections:
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raw material storage feed preparation manufacturing separation purification effluent and waste treatment product packaging and storage
These are shown in the following figure.
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In most cases, the required sections would have been dictated by the chosen process route. It is during this stage of the design that you should be alerted to:
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where recycles may be required to minimise wastage materials handling and transport requirements, and where loss containment systems have to be installed
The result at this stage is the process flowsheet.
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Functional Specification
Next, using process knowledge together with information obtained from the literature, you will have to provide details about the kind and number of main process units that are required to perform the various operations defined by the main sections of the plant. By convention, you should include only those units where composition, temperature or pressure changes occur. To do this, you will need data on reaction kinetics, physical and thermodynamic properties of the materials being handled at each section of the process and to call upon your knowledge about the capabilities of each type of processing equipment. Take the 'manufacturing' section for example. Do you use stirred tank reactors or plug flow reactors? Similarly, for the 'separations' section, you will have to decide on what type and combination of separation units are needed. Would a simple decanter be sufficient or would the separation require a combination of decanting and absorption for example? Thus, it is during this stage of the PFD development, that you get an indication of the:
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probable materials of construction for each process unit utilities (steam, water, electricity) that will be required potential hazards that may occur at unit level impact of each unit on other units in the plant
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The latter is very important from the plant operability point of view.
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MATERIAL AND HEAT BALANCES

By specifying the units that are to be used, you are essentially creating a 'skeleton' of the plant. The next step then is to put some 'flesh' onto the skeleton by quantifying the material and energy flows throughout the plant, i.e. perform material and heat balances over each unit. In carrying out the balances, you should
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justify all assumptions and approximations use mnemonic (identification tags) to label units use stream numbers to identify input and output streams use consistent nomenclature avoid use of 'small' numbers by suitable choice of units be consistent in the use of number of significant digits in calculations supplement computer generated results with hand calculations
Material Balance
This is the first quantifying stage of the design. The target of the process plant design is usually given as the desired tonnage of product per year. You should therefore use this figure and work from the end of the
process line. You will have to estimate the duties of process units
based on knowledge of the capability of the respective units, and to rationalise the material flows in and out of each unit. The results are that you will have estimates of the
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amount of feedstock/raw materials that will be required compositions and flows of each stream inventories associated with each process unit capacities of storage vessels
You should view to:

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examine the initial mass balance critically, with the
recovery of material arrangement of units the suitability of each unit process for the intended task/duty
Always bear in mind the potential hazards and safety aspects operability of the plant, at section as well as at unit levels
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You may find that changes have to be made to the initial equipment specification, because certain units may not be able to cope with the throughput, the operating conditions and so on. In this situation, the material balance may have to be performed on the entire plant again. However, unless the proposed process route has many recycles, it is more usually the case that only small changes have to be made. It is therefore helpful, if you develop the material balance using a spreadsheet or a flowsheeting package. This would definitely reduce the tedium of doing hand
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calculations over and over again.
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Energy Balance
Once the material balance has been performed, you will have to carry out an energy balance on each unit. This is to give you an idea of the energy requirements of the process and to enable the specification of cooling and heating units. Begin at exercise, you will have:
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the start of process line. At the end of this
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estimates of the temperatures of each process stream an indication of the thermal operating ranges of individual units an indication of where and the amount of heat losses that may occur established where heat exchangers would be required determined the type of steam and cooling resources that would be used
When performing the energy balance, always check that: the materials being handled by each unit do not undergo thermal degradation extreme temperatures are not unnecessarily imposed, especially when the unit has a high caustic or acidic or flammable inventory
If any of these undesirable situations occur, you may have to choose another type of unit, establish alternative operating procedures, or even change the process route. In all cases, the material balance will have to be carried out again, followed by another energy balance.
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Reconciliation of Material and Energy Balances

After performing the energy balance, you should look at each unit of the plant again to:
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check whether each unit is still viable under the material and heat loadings review plant viability in terms of manufacture and construction of the plant items, production, safety and operability assess the potential for heat recovery and reuse
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SUMMARY
On completing the PFD and the material and energy balances, the design team will be in a position to start detailed Chemical Engineering and mechanical designs of the individual process units, and specify the necessary ancillary equipment like pumps and heat exchangers. You would probably be carrying out your design based on steady-state material and energy balances, and should therefore be aware of the limitations of this approach.
Always remember that real plant operation is dynamic,
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where time is taken for material and energy to be transported and for reactions, transformations and separations to complete
You should always take this into consideration when recycling material; configuring heat recovery networks and when linking plant units together. Individuals or sub-groups in the design team are usually given responsibility over different parts of the plant. You may well find that further adjustments to operating conditions, material and energy flow specifications have to be made, which may lead to changes in equipment requirements. The design team should ensure that these changes are communicated amongst team members, and that the changes are reflected in the PFD. One approach to minimise the impact of such modifications is to assign unit design tasks according to the plant sections as visualised during the conceptual development of the PFD.
hen all the process units have been designed, the design team should review the updated PFD and produce final material and energy balance sheets where mass and energy flows balance
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USEFUL REFERENCES
1. Backhurst, J.R. and Harker, J. (19xx). Process Plant Design, (Out of 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
print, but copies available in Undergraduate Reference Section, Robinson Library) Coulson, J.M., Richardson, J.F. and Sinnott, R.K. (1983). Chemical Engineering olume Design, Pergamon. Douglas, J.M., (1988). Conceptual Design of Chemical Processes, McGraw Hill Kletz, T. (197x). a op and a an, IChemE Marlin, T.E. (1995). Process Control designing processes and control systems for dynamic performance. McGraw-Hill. McCabe, W.L., Smith, J.C. and Harriott, P. (1993). Unit Operations of Chemical Engineering, Fifth Edition, McGraw-Hill. Perry, R.H. and Chilton, C.H. (19xx). Chemical Engineers andbook, McGraw Hill Westerberg, A., Hutchison, P., Motard, R. and Winter, P. (1979). Process Flowsheeting, Cambridge University Press.
Back to Contents See also: uidelines for Preparing Design Reports
Please email comments / suggestions / corrections to M.T. Tham

By: M.T. Tham Copyright 1997 Dept. of Chemical and Process Engineering University of Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK
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Process Design Notes - PFD Development