Major plant items

Preliminary estimate (budget authorization estimate). More details about the process and equipment, e.g., design of major plant items, are required. The accnracy is probably -20 to -1-25 percent. 

Action Prepare detailed specifications for all major plant items to be designed. 

Through enhancements and improvements in not only the major plant items but also in maintenance equipment, procedures and operational analysis. 

Extend the safe useful operation life of major HT/HP power plant items, subject to time-dependent creep and thermal fatigue damage, with benefits in terms of delayed costs for component replacement. 

The ideal method would be that all plant or equipment units have a duplicate or redundant standby that on failure would automatically be brought into service. This is satisfactory when considering small, less expensive units, which are installed to ensure that the services they are providing are not disrupted (this could also include auxiliary items on major plant and equipment). However, due to the capital costs of the major unit itself, it would be... 

Capital cost estimates for chemical process plants are often based on an estimate of the purchase cost of the major equipment items required for the process, the other costs being estimated as factors of the equipment cost. The accuracy of this type of estimate will depend on what stage the design has reached at the time the estimate is made, and on the reliability of the data available on equipment costs. In the later stages of the project design, when detailed equipment specifications are available and firm quotations have been obtained, an accurate estimation of the capital cost of the project can be made. 

The production of methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) is described in Appendix G, problem G.3. A preliminary design has been made for a plant to produce 10,000 tonne per year. The major equipment items required are listed below. The plant attainment will be 8000 hours per year. 

TABLE 5. Major plant service Functions of In-House safety organisation Item Service... 

Main plant items (MPI). These include aU major process- and utility-related equipment. Major includes pumps, fans, in-line filters, and installed spare equipment but excludes valves, piping, fittings, pipe hangers, heat tracing, lighting, vents, hoists, interlocks, breakers, and starter panels. Skid-mounted packages are considered to be one MPI. 

For reasons of confidentiality, exact details of the reactor designs have to remain undisclosed in this discussion. The final economic analysis, however, incorporates them in a 20% estimate of the major equipment cost. The installation factor, defined as the ratio of the final cost over the cost of major equipment items, is projected to be in the order of 2 here, as foundations, piping, general infrastructure will be far less extensive in this compact and highly physically integrated plant. Table 3.4 compares the cost of methanol produced for three cases ... 

Vacuum on a distillation plant should always be broken with inert gas, a major extra item if inert gas facilities are needed for no other purpose. 

As described in paragraph 9.4.6 (e) all major NSSS plant Items except the RPV can be removed as whole units and extracted from the reactor building via the existing plant access penetration. 

The reliability of a plant is a sum of reliabilities of all the equipment, instruments, and other hardware. The reliability of each item of equipment is estimated based on its past operational performance (failure rates, repair durations, etc.) and on current maintenance practices (preventive maintenance intervals and durations, test intervals, etc.). Once the economic impacts of various scenarios in which units or major equipment items fail has been established, the required safety features can be designed (e.g., profit-risk scenario and minimal cutoff could be established) (see Fig. 8.10). To the left of the dotted line in the figure, the litigation cost is higher than the cost of safety features the reverse trend exists on the right of the dotted line. 

Process flow diagram This document schematically shows all major equipment items within a plant and how they are linked together by piping, ducts, and... 

Industrial risk assessment is a careful examination of potential hazards that may affect the operation of a system, be it large and complex or relatively simple. These risks may be associated with the risks to the safety and integrity of physical assets, risks to the environment, financial risks from various decisions, and also risks from corrosion or poor corrosion mitigation procedures. Corrosion-related failures may be a major source of risk in many industry sectors. In the offshore oil and gas installations, for example, corrosion can be a life-limiting cause of deterioration by various corrosion damage attacks of plant items. 

Problem. The catalyst in our benzene reactor has lost activity and must be replaced. The benzene process presented in Chapter 1 fFigure L5) is used to produce benzene. The reaction is carried out in an adiabatic PFR. Because of the cost of periodic catalyst replacement, it has been su ested that the catalytic reactor system could be replaced with a noncatalytic adiabatic PFR system that might be less costly. The new system is to match the input/output conditions of the current system so that the remainder of the plant will operate with litde, if any, modification. You are asked to investigate the merits of this suggestion by identifying major cost items. Table 20.1 provides reactor information based on experimental studies on the toluene/benzene reaction. 

Engineers involved in the development of packaged processing plants or major equipment items where automatic protection systems may be needed... 

Simply stated, compressors are employed whenever a gas at a certain pressure in one location is required to be at a higher pressure at another location. However, this belies the fact that compressors are major ticket items in the capital cost of a chemical or petroleum plant. For example, a large centrifugal compressor with a gas turbine is an investment of many millions of dollars. 

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