Process development, life cycle stages

As introduced in Section 14.2, bottlenecks in the process facilities can occur at many stages in a producing field life cycle. A process facility bottleneck is caused when any piece of equipment becomes overloaded and restricts throughput. In the early years of a development, production will often be restricted by the capacity of the processing facility to treat hydrocarbons. If the reservoir is performing better than expected it may pay to increase plant capacity. If, however, it is just a temporary production peak such a modification may not be worthwhile. 

A checklist analysis (CCPS, 1992) verifies the status of a system. It is versatile, easy and applicable at any life-cycle stage of a process. It is primarily used to show compliance with standards and practices by cost-effectively identifying hazards, chlorine Tar> <- liccklists provide commonality for management K.-, icw of hazard assessments. It may be used for controlling a proces.s from development to decommissioning. Approvals by appropriate authorities Cl i( V each stage of a project. 

Within the broad framework of sustainable development, we should strive to maximize resource efficiency through activities such as energy and nonrenewable resource conservation, risk minimization, pollution prevention, minimization of waste at all stages of a product life-cycle, and the development of products that are durable and can be re-used and recycled. Sustainable chemistry strives to accomplish these ends through the design, manufacture and use of efficient and effective, more environmentally benign chemical products and processes". 

Processes and facilities go through various stages of development. Progression through these stages has come to be called the life cycle (Bollinger et al. 1996). Typical life cycle stages are ... 

Much of the process knowledge and documentation is developed through the earlier life cycle stages of a facility. Most of these components need to be retained or kept up to date during the entire facility lifetime. 

Computer Systems Validation (CSV) The formal assessment and reporting of quality and performance measures for all the life-cycle stages of software and system development, its implementation, qualification and acceptance, operation, modification, requalification, maintenance, and retirement, such that the user has a high level of confidence in the integrity of both the processes executed within the controlling computer system(s), and in those processes controlled by and/or linked to the computer system(s), within the prescribed operating environments) (MCA). 

Normally, each of these life-cycle phases occurs sequentially, but occasionally, development tasks are performed concurrently, spirally, or incrementally to shorten and/or simplify the development process. Regardless of the development process used, sequential, concurrent, spiral, or incremental, the system life-cycle phases shown in Figure 2.85 basically remain the same. The life-cycle stages of a system are important divisions in the evolution of a product, and are therefore very relevant to the system safety process. System safety tasks are planned and referenced around these five phases. In order to proactively... 

Flow-sheet models are used at all stages in the life cycle of a process plant during process development, for process design and retrofits, and for plant operations. Input to the model consists of information normally contained in the process flow sheet. Output from the model is a complete representation of the performance of the plant, including the composition, flow, and properties of all intermediate and product streams and the performance of the process units. 

Equipment—client may not have the equipment required to manufacture a specific product. It may be that available capital and installation time are limited such that they simply can not design, acquire, install and test the process equipment to reach the desired capacity within the available budget and time. If a product is in the early stages of its life cycle, the capital required may be hard to justify. This could be based upon the low initial volume anticipated while developing the market or the need to take advantage of a time-sensitive business opportunity. Tolling can provide a means to safely produce introductoiy, short-term, or small volume products that would otherwise be uneconomic. 

The production of the agrochemical 6 (Scheme 5.7) is carried out batchwise via a three-step protocol. Mass balancing has been conducted for three stages of development Laboratory-, pilot- and operation scale. An LCA was available for the operation stage only. A description of this LCA including data sources and data acquisition methods was published by Geisler et al. (product A in reference [9] corresponds to product 6 here). Many parameters in the Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI) are estimated, especially utihty demands and yields of processes for the production of precursors. Uncertainty in these estimations was illustrated in a... 

Advisory Group are considering different facets of LCA. In 1993, they developed the Code of Practice ,the first worldwide accepted technical framework for LCA. This was an important step towards the harmonisation of the method and has initiated and supported the standardisation process by ISO. Between 1997 and 2000, ISO produced the international series of standard defining the different stages of the LCA methodology (ISO 14040 1997, ISO 14041 1998, ISO 14042 2000 ° as well as ISO 14043 2000° ). As mentioned above, these standards were replaced by two improved editions of life cycle assessment standards in 2006 (ISO 14040 2006 and ISO 14044 2006°). 

The ECO method was developed to aid environmental impact and cost optimisation of chemical synthesis pathways or processes suitable for the research and development (R D) stage. In order to represent terms of ecological as well as economic sustainability, three objective functions which incorporate (i) energy demand (EF), (ii) risks concerning human health and the environment (EHF) and (iii) costs (CE), were defined. Their calculation follows the life cycle approach and is based on the data available already in R D. Because the application of a comprehensive LCA is both, too complex and based on data which are partially not available at the R D stage, the determination of the three objective functions is based on the SLCA approach extended by economic issues. The key objectives are introduced below. 

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