PLANT CONSTRUCTION

TABLE 9-63 Relative Plant Construction Costs in Various Countries Compared with the United States... 

Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) was passed. This act and its various amendments are often referred to as tne Clean Water Act (CWA). It provided loans for treatment plant construction and temporary authority for federal control of interstate water pollution. The enforcement powers were so heavily dependent on the states as... 

As an example of coirelating plant costs, the cost data from a nylon intermediate plant constructed from stainless steel was accumulated and converted to factors as shown in Table 2. 

Richardson Rapid System, Process Plant Construction Estimating Standards, Richardson Engineering Service, Inc. (latest edition) San Marcos, California. 

The necessary steps are a lot easier to accomplish if the compressor installation is still on the drawing board. This author s best field tests were run on units where the instrumentation was installed during plant construction. Sometimes, as plants are going through revisions for other reasons, it is possible to add the necessary compressor test equipment. 

Lead is the softest and most easily worked metal used in plant construction. The main difficulty in design is that the metal has a very low creep stress. 

Dispersion-strengthened lead (DSL), obtained by a uniform dispersion of lead oxide through the lead particle matrix, has the traditional corrosion resistance of lead but much greater stiffness. DSL is fabrieated as pipe and other extruded items, but has a limited applieation for proeess plant construction because the welding technique does not provide adequate strengths in joints. 

These represent the best compromise between corrosion resistance and strength. It is the most useful class of alloys for chemical and process plant construction. Examples are given in Table 3.30. 

Differences in composition require different temperatures for the high-temperature solution treatment, as well as variations both in time and temperature of aging. Heat-treatable plate and sheet alloys are not widely used for process plant construction because heat treatment has to be applied after welding to restore the mechanical properties. 

Titanium is a white metal and, when cold, is brittle and may be powdered. At a red heat it may be forged and drawn. The tensile strength of titanium is almost the same as that of steel, while its specific gravity (4.5) is almost two times less than that of steel. Hence, its specific strength (tensile strength/speciflc gravity) is 1000, which is considerably higher than that of 18/8 steel, which has a value of 700. Titanium is now available as plate, sheet and tube, and its use in chemical plant construction is considered common. 

PVC, the polymerization product of chlorine-substituted ethylene derivatives, is probably the most widely used plastic for process plant construction. It is available in four different types rigid, high impact, high temperature and plasticized. 

Liquid resins are usually reinforced with fibers (glass, asbestos), because of their brittleness. They are almost always used for process plant construction. As liquid resins they can be catalyzed to cure at room temperature and low pressures. Relatively cheap wooden molds are required to build quite large items such as tanks and ducting on a one-off basis. The principal materials in this group of plastics are described below. 

Utility Data Institute. (1994). Electric Utility Power Plant Construction Costs. Washington DC Utility Data Institute. 

The fear of accidents like Chernobyl, and the high cost of nuclear waste disposal, halted nuclear power plant construction in the United States m the 1980s, and in most ol the rest ol the world by the 1990s. Because nuclear fusion does not present the waste disposal problem of fission reactors, there is hope that fusion will be the primary energy source late in the twenty-first centuiy as the supplies of natural gas and petroleum dwindle. 

Accounting, plant construction costs, 48 Cost accumulation, 49 Affinity laws, 201, 202, 203 Air Inleakage, vacuum systems, see vacuum systems Air pressure drop, table, 106 Chart, 114 Orifice flow, 107 Air, absolute viscosity, 132... 

Tests conducted in Finland and Sweden have indicated the viability of using waste paper and plastic packaging as a fuel in a conventional power plant rather than in a municipal solid waste incinerator. If the process is accepted, as much as 30 million tonnes of the 50 million tonnes of combustible packaging which Europe consumes each year could be used for power generation. The feasibility of the initiative is discussed, and its implications in terms of future power plant construction. APME... 

GPMP is concerned with the manufacture of medicines, and includes control of ingredients, plant construction, process validation, production, and cleaning (see also Chapter 22). QC is that part of GPMP dealing with specification, documentation and assessing conformance to specification. 

Hessel and Lowe report on hybrid, i.e. multi-scale, approaches which are currently most often favored for micro-reactor plant construction, simply for practical time and cost reasons [9, 10]. In addition, such an approach allows one to fit micro reactors in existing industrial, producing and academia, measuring environments. The micro reactor is only used where it is really needed and costs for changing the processing are kept to a minimum in such a way (Figure 1.9). 

The chemical reactivity of the material to be processed for size reduction can pose a great problem. For example, the plant construction itself may be exposed to the threat of corrosion. The size reduction process generally raises the temperature of the material in question and this effect may alter the material in some undesirable way. 

The other advantages which sulfuric acid has as an inert electrolyte are (i) it increases the conductance of the bath (ii) it is inexpensive (iii) it strongly inhibits the hydrolysis of cuprous sulfate (iv) it is nonvolatile and may be used at high concentrations and temperatures and (v) it does not attack lead, so that it is possible to use this metal for plant construction. The only inconvenience of sulfuric acid is that copper dissolves in it essentially as the divalent ion this means that the current consumption is double of that which would be consumed if the electrolysis were to be carried out in an electrolyte solution containing Cu+ ions. Attempts to implement this alternative have not been very successful so that the use of sulfuric acid is yet to be challenged. 

Plastics are being increasingly used as corrosion-resistant materials for chemical plant construction. They can be divided into two broad classes ... 

Butt, L. T. and Wright, D. C. (1980) Use of Polymers in Chemical Plant Construction (Applied Science). Champion, F. A. (1967) Corrosion Testing Procedures 3rd edn (Chapman Hall). 

A physical model of a major plant construction can occupy several hundred square metres. The computer model is contained on a few discs. 

The physical model has to be transported to the plant site for use in the plant construction and operator training. A computer model can be instantly available in the design office, the customer s offices, and at the plant site. 

Further, the authors have carefully examined and documented the public health and environmental impacts of pesticide use in the USSR. The USSR was the largest country by territory in the world and the use of pesticide here was enormous. As the authors have shown, this happened mostly because the USSR s Communistic rulers decided at the end of the 1960 s — to turn all chemical weaponry plants (constructed in the beginning of the cold war) to pesticide production. With rich government subsidies, pesticides were distributed through all collective farms The Soviet official policy, the chemicalisation of agriculture, was an attempt to overcome its prominent ineffectiveness in crop production. 

The completion date has an effect on the cost, if for no other reason than the change of prices and salaries with time. In the 1960s there was approximately a2.5% increase in plant construction costs per year and a similar increase in equipment costs. Between 1970 and 1974, the rates were 3 and 5% respectively. 

For instance, equipment made of monel generally costs 6.5 times as much as the same item constructed of carbon steel. If 25% of the equipment purchased for a plant were made of monel, this would increase the equipment costs by 237%, and the factor cost estimate would be 2.37 times that for a plant constructed of carbon steel. This is unreasonable, since the cost of buildings, roads, wiring, piping utilities, insulating, and instrumentation are independent of the materials of construction. In fact the only major changes would be in the process piping, which,... 

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