PreFEED corporation solution for R&D to Design

Tips to Scale-up & Design

Chemical Engineering knowledge is necessary for scale-up consideration, process design, trouble shooting etc. Although the knowledge taught at the universities is important as foundation, we need more experience to address these areas in the practical situations.
PreFEED has obtained and is developing the practical knowledge by working with process industries. We would like to share some of our experience for you to use as tips.

Physical Properties

Physical Properties are required for almost all the process design. They are especially important for distillation and extraction. Although many process simulators provide the detailed calculations, we hope that this section serves you for the better understanding of the theories behind the process simulators.

Fluid Transport / Mixing

Fluid transport and mixing are quite frequently used in many type of chemical plants. Pipes, valves, pumps are almost always appear in many chemical plants. Their pressure drop and selection of proper equipment are engineers' everyday task.

Crystallization

Crystallization is used to purify the product which has higher boiling point and inadequate for distillation. As it involves solid precipitation from homogeneous liquid, its phenomena is complex and wholesome theory has not been established yet. However, there are useful knowledge and modeling technique which can be applied to the industrial processes.

Evaporation / Distillation

Evaporation and Distillation are the most utilized purification method in chemical plants. Although it requires more energy than other purification methods, these area are better established in terms of energy saving design and scale-up. Progress of process simulators has helped these areas achieve more reliable design.

Reaction

Reaction is the center of chemical processes and the source of competitiveness of the products. Although there are variety of reactions realized in the chemical plants, analysis of kinetic data and design method are reasonably well established. Calculation of reaction kinetics has been made convenient because of the progress of the equation solving software such as EQUATRAN.

Heat Transfer

Heat transfer equipment is second most used in many plants. There have been good progress of the technologies and engineers must select the most suitable type to their processes. Even in the conventional heat transfer such as batch heating or cooling, the prediction of the temperature behavior is often critical to heat-sensitive materials. This needs the proper modeling of the phenomenon.

Other

We will also extend our paper coverage to the related areas for process development and process design not limited to the fields above.