Chemical processing engineering approaches

The text deals with the microbial and chemical process engineering of sewer networks. It emphasizes dry-weather processes and not the wet-weather impacts that are primarily controlled by physical processes. Under such conditions, the physical in-sewer processes in terms of, for example, hydraulics, sediment and biofilm erosion and solids transport are important. A quite different approach must be applied when wet-weather conditions in sewers dominate. However, wet-weather performance of sewers also requires that sediment deposition be dealt with during dry-weather periods. 

A modular reactor similar to the approach of Adler et al. [11] was introduced by Muller and co-workers [37, 38, 56], The screening procedure was separated into a number of process operations. In chemical process engineering, these so-called unit operations are essential components of every complex plant. As catalyst screening involves many different processes such as heat exchange, flow distribution, sampling, analysis and reaction, such a subdivision into unit operations is justified. The flexibility of such a system was demonstrated with two exemplified configurations later, one of which was used for transient studies and one for steady-state experiments (Figure 3.30). 

All in all, the flowsheet editor FEW is a promising new approach to chemical process design in the early stages because it offers new, meaningful functions and integrates different tools. However, without improving the interaction-related usability issues, the task-related new concept cannot be evaluated in a realistic scenario with experienced chemical process engineers. 

Kumar, A., Yuan, X., Sahn, A. K., Dewulf J., Ergas, S. J. and van Langenhove, H. 2010b. A hollow fiber membrane photo-bioreactor for C02 seqnestration from combustion gas conpled with wastewater treatment a process engineering approach. Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology, 85,387-394. 

After Neal Amundson s pioneering work on mathematical methods in chemical engineering, numerical procedures penetrated more and more into chemical engineering applications. Forced to reduce the costs and time for the development and design of new chemical processes, mathematical approaches have proved to be indispensable tools. The main advantages of numerical methods in chenndcal engineering are ... 

Additionally, there is process simulation steady-state flow sheet simulators and dynamic flow sheet simulators. Steady-state flow sheet simulators have been widely used in chemical process engineering since the 1960s. Steady-state simulators describe the process as a set of modules connected by flows of material and energy between them. The modules correspond to mass and energy balances together with physical and thermodynamic data necessary for calculations. The calculations may be performed using one of two basic techniques. The sequential approach computes modules one by one, in a direction that generally follows that of the physical flows in the system (Leiviska, 1996). 

T. Umeda, T. Harada, and K. Shiroko, "A Thermodynamic Approach to the Synthesis of Heat Integration Systems in Chemical Processes," Proceedings of the 12th Symposium on Computer Applications in Chemical Engineering, Montreaux, Swit2edand, 1979, p. 487. 

The use of the computer in the design of chemical processes requires a framework for depiction and computation completely different from that of traditional CAD/CAM appHcations. Eor this reason, most practitioners use computer-aided process design to designate those approaches that are used to model the performance of individual unit operations, to compute heat and material balances, and to perform thermodynamic and transport analyses. Typical process simulators have, at their core, techniques for the management of massive arrays of data, computational engines to solve sparse matrices, and unit-operation-specific computational subroutines. 

CCPS G-41. Inherently Safer Processes A Life Cycle Approach. American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Center for Chemical Process Safety, New York. 

This technique is the longest established of all the human reliability quantification methods. It was developed by Dr. A. D. Swain in the late 1960s, originally in the context of military applications. It was subsequently developed further in the nuclear power industry. A comprehensive description of the method and the database used in its application, is contained in Swain and Guttmann (1983). Further developments are described in Swain (1987). The THERP approach is probably the most widely applied quantification technique. This is due to the fact that it provides its own database and uses methods such as event trees which are readily familiar to the engineering risk analyst. The most extensive application of THERP has been in nuclear power, but it has also been used in the military, chemical processing, transport, and other industries. 

Before the advent of modem computer-aided mathematics, most mathematical models of real chemical processes were so idealized that they had severely limited utility— being reduced to one dimerrsion and a few variables, or Unearized, or limited to simplified variability of parameters. The increased availability of supercomputers along with progress in computational mathematics and numerical functional analysis is revolutionizing the way in which chemical engineers approach the theory and engineering of chemical processes. The means are at hand to model process physics and chenustry from the... 

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