Chemical Engineer

Design of any manufacturing facility should ideally start with preparation of a Process & Instrumentation Diagram (P & I diagram) for the process and utilities. P & I diagram helps in crystallization of all thoughts and concepts to be put down pictorially. This helps identifying the optimum number of accessories viz. accessories like valves, fittings and instruments. This also helps identify areas where uncertainties exist. Sizes of various pipelines and accessories in the pipelines are determined easily when planned through a P & I diagram. Equipment interlocks also get depicted through P & I diagrams . Chemical Process Engineers follows the concept of putting down the flowrate and values of targeted process parameters viz. temperature and pressure displayed in the P & I diagram. Process & Instrumentation Diagram usually expressed as `P & I Diagram’  is a vital tool for a Plant Designer. The simplicity or complexity of any manufacturing ...

According to the most fundamental and basic laws of physics, Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, and so is the physical states or mass. However, they can be converted form one form to another to maintain the balance or which is what called as conservation of energy/mass. These two laws has been utilized in several other derivations of physics and other field formulas and statements. So, in order to have a little grasp of energy and mass balance , we will get to know about each of them in brief in this Article. Mass balance According to the conversation of mass principle , mass in any physical state can neither be created nor destroyed. If there is any increase in mass of a physical state, then, there is an equivalent decrease in the mass of any other physical state at the same so as to balance that mass. If we try to write the mass balance in a formula, it can be written as: Mass at time+ change in mass= mass at time t + new mass added in one physical state – mass decreased...

Before getting straight to pilot plant design or pilot plant scale-up , we do need to understand ‘what is pilot plant ’. Commercial production of anything requires several layers of initial testing which incorporates the machine testing, product testing, quality testing and so forth. In simpler words, the pilot plant can be the case of plant testing. The pilot plant is small-scale plant developed and designed for making all the testing required for the plant to explore any problems or bug in the plant, and finally ensuring a flawless production from the full-scale plant. Or, we can say, a small system developed to find out the behavior and problems (if any) of any process to ensure the error-free and smooth running of the larger system, finally developed for commercial production. But, pilot plant design and pilot plant scale-up are not that easily manageable. So, we have come up with a small guide step in case you are going for a pilot plant before the final commerci...

Chemical reactions always do require some certain environment condition in order to produce the required output, which implies that they cannot always be done at a room condition. And, thus they require some separate vessel where things can be pre-set based on the chemical reaction requirement, which is the chemical reactor . Chemical reactor is an isolated enclosed vessel or volume designed for any chemical reaction to take place. In chemical engineering, chemical reactors were not designed just for providing the required condition to the chemical reactions, but also to maximize the efficiency of the reaction. The most basic type of chemical reactor design comes in the form of a tank, or pipe, so isolated for efficient chemical reaction to get efficient and desired output of the chemical reaction. There are two types of reactor design , isothermal reactor designs, and non- isothermal reactor designs. No wonder, reactor design is like the most fundamental need in chemic...