Profit Maximization Techniques for Operating Chemical Plants. Sandip K. LahiriЧитать онлайн книгу.
advanced computational technique, namely principal component analysis (PCA), is discussed to visualize data. The advantage of such an online monitoring system is to visualize the plant condition from a higher level but with a lower dimension space. A step by step procedure to build a PCA‐based advance monitoring system is explained in detail, with examples and industrial case studies.
Fault Diagnosis
Chemical industries recently discovered that a large amount of profit becomes eroded due to unplanned shutdowns of the plant. Due to spurious trips of equipment much potential profit is lost. One major ingredients of profit maximization is to increase plant reliability and running hours. Plant shutdown can be avoided by building a robust fault diagnosis system that will detect and alert the operator about any potential event that can lead to plant disturbance and eventually plant shutdown before it starts happening. How a robust fault diagnosis system can be made by PCA and ANN that can be implemented in industry is discussed in detail in this chapter with industrial case studies. Different aspects of enhancement of plant reliability by an advance monitoring and fault diagnosis system is the main focus of the chapter.
Optimization of the Existing Distillation Column
Often distillation columns cause a bottleneck to increase plant capacity. It is very important to understand the operation and capacity limits of distillation columns in commercial plants. Chapter 11 enlightens the reader about how to evaluate a feasible operating window by using a capacity diagram. Calculations based on the capacity diagram and the effect of different design and operating variables on the capacity diagram are explained in detail with example calculations. This chapter enlightens the reader about operating profile assessment, tower rating assessment, tower efficiency assessment, and hydraulic performance evaluations of running distillation columns. It also provides practical guidelines regarding what to look for in distillation column optimization in an industrial context and explains the whole concept with real‐life case studies.
New Design Methodology
Due to intense competition among chemical industries across the globe, it is now absolutely necessary to minimize the cost of equipment during the design phase. Equipment costs consist of the initial capital cost of the equipment and the operating costs of the equipment. Due to the availability of a faster computer, it is now feasible to design one million different design configurations for any equipment. It is important to choose the lowest cost equipment among those one million options, but one that also obeys all of the constraints of operation, safety, maintainability, etc. Hence, to survive in today's cut‐throat competition, it is necessary to put the minimization of equipment cost as the main design target and an optimization algorithm is required to search all feasible design configurations to arrive at a minimum cost design quickly. This gives rise to a new design methodology of process equipment. Earlier traditional design methodology, where cost is not considered as a design target during the design phase, no longer produces a competitive design. In this chapter, a new design methodology of a plate‐type distillation column is considered as a case study to show the essence of the new design methodology. This chapter evolves a strategy to optimize various tray geometric parameters, like tray diameter, hole diameter, fractional whole area, downcomer width, etc., and also decides on the optimum feed tray location based on the overall cost minimization concept by particle swarm optimization techniques.
Genetic Programing for Modeling of Industrial Reactors
Industrial reactors are the most potential candidates used to increase profit, yet they are the most neglected in the optimization project in industry. This is due to fear of process engineers to change reaction parameters beyond their usual boundaries because of poor knowledge of reaction kinetics. Conventional methods for evaluating complex industrial reaction kinetics have their own limitations. Chapter 13 introduces a completely new advanced computational technique, namely geometric programing (GP), to model industrial reaction kinetics. Being a new computational technique, the main advantage of GP is that process engineers do not have to assume any form of kinetic equation beforehand; it will be generated on its own from available industrial reactor data. The theoretical basis of GP with its various features, an algorithm of GP, and different case studies are discussed in detail to enlighten the reader about this new technique. How a generated kinetic model can be used online and offline to increase profit from an industrial reactor is described in detail through case studies.
Maximum Capacity Test Run and Debottlenecking Study
All over the world, chemical plants are running 100–140% of their installed nameplate capacity. Profit maximization by capacity enhancement is a very common route in process industries. This high capacity running more than their design capacity is possible due to inherent safety margins available in process equipment. This chapter helps readers to understanding different safety margins available in process equipment and explains the strategy to exploit those margins. Chapter 14 explains in a systematic way how to increase plant capacity without affecting safety and reliability. Plant real bottlenecks and the potential opportunity to increase capacity can be evaluated by actually performing a demo test run of the plant with the highest possible capacity for one week, which is commonly known as a maximum capacity test run. Fourteen key steps to carry out a maximum capacity test run in commercial running plants is the key focus area of this chapter. All the steps of the maximum capacity test run are explained with real‐life examples and industrial case studies. The next step of the maximum capacity test run is to find real bottlenecks of the plant by a debottlenecking (DBN) study. How to carry out a DBN study from the existing data and its different aspects are discussed in this chapter.
Loss Assessment
One of the strategies of profit maximization is to reduce the wastage of resources. In other words, this essentially means to minimize all the money drain from the plant. Chapter 15 enlightens the reader about various strategies used to reduce the losses and wastages. A step‐by‐step procedure for a money loss audit is explained in detail in this chapter.
Advance Process Control
Advance process control (APC) already established itself as an effective tool to increase profit by pushing the process at its constraints. What is APC, how APC brings benefits, a candidate for APC implementation, and typical benefits obtained from commercial APC applications across the world are the subjects described in Chapter 16 to enlighten a new reader about the potential of APC. A step‐by‐step procedure to build an effective APC application is discussed in detail. Special emphasis is given to describe the most important step, namely the functional design step. Do's and Don'ts of APC application buildings are explained so that readers are aware how to develop a robust application.
150 Ways and Best Practices to Improve Profit in Running a Chemical Plant
There are a million ways to increase profit. Leading refineries, petrochemicals, and chemical companies around the world have developed some best practices on their journeys for continuous improvement. These best practices are not confined to some process area and discipline, but are in diverse fields. The author has visited many fortune 500 chemical companies around the world and collected a list of these best practices. Due to brevity, only some of the high‐impact best practices are shared here. Leading chemical companies had discovered these best practices as part of their learning experience spanning over decades. When they implemented these best practices in their plants, they found huge profit improvements. Chapter 17 gives an overview of 150 best practices followed by leading process industries around the world. All of the best practices