Conversion of Plant-Specific Data

It should be noted that the data collection and conversion effort is not trivial, it is company and plant-specific and requires substantial effort and coordination between intracompany groups. No statistical treatment can make up for inaccurate or incomplete raw data. The keys to valid, high-quality data are thoroughness and quality of personnel training comprehensive procedures for data collection, reduction, handling and protection (from raw records to final failure rates) and the ability to audit and trace the origins of finished data. Finally, the system must be structured and the data must be coded so that they can be located within a well-designed failure rate taxonomy. When done properly, valuable and uniquely applicable failure rate data and equipment reliability information can be obtained. 

Rates of equipment failure are calculated by dividing the number of failures for an equipment population by its total exposure hours or total number of demands. The following key types of information, therefore, are needed to develop plant-specific failure rate data  

The first step in failure rate determination for a specific type of process equipment is to obtain a list of the installed equipment at the plant and sufficient description data to assign it a number within the CCPS Taxonomy. The descriptive information desired by the analyst is  

Although maintenance systems contain some of this information, engineering, purchasing, and operating department records may be required to find the remainder. Also, equipment maintenance records may be in several file locations since they are usually organized by components and component modules that may differ from equipment boundaries established for risk analysis. 

Ideally, maintenance records should be organized by a classification method compatible with the CCPS Taxonomy in Appendix A and the equipment boundaries in Section 5.5, Generic Failure Rate Data Base. It is important to remember that the taxonomy presented was developed to group equipment into classes that are differentiated by their reliability rather than their design characteristics. Records maintained in this fashion allow the analyst to more easily determine the total pieces of equipment and number failures. 

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Chapter 6—Collection and Conversion of Plant-Specific Data E)escribes the type of data required and their treatment to develop a plant-specific data set suitable for use or aggregation with other data. 

A different set of forms, in extensive use for failure rate calculation, are used to illustrate the remaining sections of this chapter. Beginning with Figure 6.3, the forms present a worked pump example for the conversion of actual plant raw data to plant-specific failure rate data. 

So, as the comparison of technology related data and the comparison of specific cost are not likely to describe competitiveness for different kinds of biomass conversion technologies, it seems to be necessary to choose the application of technologies as a basis for describing the competitive situation. The term application is used in this paper to describe a plant and its purpose, size, the fuel used, the aimual operation time, the specific labour cost and the cost for the conventional alternatives given for the investor. 

A number of reviews on various aspects of QBA have been published. The principal information can be found in the two books on isoquinoline alkaloids by Shamma [1,2] and the reviews by Santavy [3,4] and Simanek [5] in The Alkaloids series. A highly valuable review of the physical and spectral data and the occurence of the 88 benzophenanthridine alkaloids has been compiled by the Shamma group [6], Preininger has summarized the distribution of QBA in plant species of the Papaveraceae and Fumariace-ae families [7]. A review by Dostal and Potacek specifically devoted to the in vitro nucleophilic conversions of QBA appeared in 1990 [8], Surveys on the biological activities [9-11] and biosynthetic formation [12,13] of these alkaloids have been published. Well-designed reviews of the syntheses of the QBA are also available [14-16]. Hanaoka and Mukai presented a treatise on the biomimetic syntheses of the benzophenanthridines from the protoberberines in volume 14 of the Studies in Natural Products Chemistry series [17]. Quite recently, a book by Bentley treating isoquinoline alkaloids also involved benzophenathridines [18]. 

Several types of data based on feeding experiments, isolation of intermediates and in vivo NMR experiments, indicate that norcoclaurine (23) serves as a precursor to both coclaurine (24) and (S)-reticuline (20) (Stadler et al., 1987, 1989), and that (5)-coclaurine (24) serves as a specific precursor to other classes of benzylisoquinoline alkaloids, such as the protoberberines, benzophenanthridines, and morphinandie-nones, as well as for pavine and benzophenanthridine alkaloids in intact plants (Stadler et al., 1987, 1989). The five enzymes involved in the conversion of dopamine and 4-hydroxyphenylacetaldehyde (19) to (S)-reticuline (20) have been elucidated (Frenzel and Zenk, 1990b). 

For the specification of the selected applications a variety of data has to be integrated. This data describe the situation of typical applications of biomass conversion plants in the detail needed for the calculation of the annual cost. In the following list the... 

In A the specific reactor parameters must then be found in a subsequent step. From a mathematical point of view, however, it would be more correct to include the rigorous reactor model in B directly, thus eliminating step A so that consistent process data and reactor parameters are found simultaneously. However, due to experimental uncertainties in the measurements — even from a very well-controlled pilot plant — apparent model limitations, limited amount of data, and/or model deficiencies, such an approach will seldom be able to give a reliable representation of all measured properties of the reactor and will result in wrong parameters. It is therefore preferable to execute the reconciliation as a two-step procedure, where the conversion and equilibrium reactor models of type A are used in the first step followed by the rigorous reactor model B in the second step to find the reactor parameters, but using the reconciled measurements from the first calculation. This is a permissible split for the syngas processes where conversions and temperature approaches are sufficient to characterise the reactions. 

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