Plants design Improvement

By far the most important derivative of sulfuric acid is phosphoric acid. It has been unknowingly used as fertilizer for hundreds of years. The wet process method of manufacture was important until 1920, when furnace acid began increasing in popularity. The wet process, however, has made a comeback because of plant design improvements 60% of phosphoric acid was made by this method in 1954, 88% in 1974, and over 90% currently. The furnace process is used only to make concentrated acid (75-85%) and pure product. It is very expensive because of the 2000 °C temperature required. In the furnace process phosphate rock is heated with sand and coke to give elemental phosphorus, which is then oxidized and hydrated to phosphoric acid. A simplified chemical reaction is ... 

The economic competition that comes from the global economy will produce changes in the process industries and plant design. Improved energy efficiency will be important in chemical processing. Fuel price fluctuations pass directly to the product costs are so designed for efficient energy use. 

Improving the economics of gas plant design, construction, and operations is essential to ensure the approval of future de-bottlenecking, capacity expansion, and new projects. The economics include not only capital investment, life cycle operations, and maintenance costs, but also the monetary equivalents of safety, reliability, and availability. 

During regular operations to identify potential improvements for the next plant. Process improvement studies can then demonstrate the feasibility of inherent safety improvements so they can easily be incorporated into the design of the next plant or in major revamps of existing facilities. 

Most than 500 plant design or operation improvements were identified by licei " of the improvements were procedural/operational changes 40% were design/hardware c ew... 

Advanced two- and three-dimensional computer analysis methods are used today in the analyses of all critical components to verify aerodynamic, heat transfer, and mechanical performance. Additionally, the reduction of leakage paths in the compressor, as well as in the gas turbine expander, results in further plant efficiency improvements. At the compressor inlet, an advanced inlet flow design improves efficiency by reducing pressure loss. Rotor air cooler heat utilization and adt anccd blade and vane cooling arc also used. 

As time goes on, more and more people are being involved in these types of plant design. Most chemical companies estimate that 50% of their profits 10 years hence will come from products not currently known to their research laboratories. Since these will compete with other products now on the market, there will be a great need for improving present processes and estimating a rival s financial status. 

The PSO-Eltra project is a Pre-pilot SOFC production plant designed to scale-up existing laboratory production methods, build the necessary know-how for establishing industrial production, improve reproduction possibilities and develop non-destructive methods for production control. The project ran from 2001-2003, participants included Riso, HaldorTopsoe, and Eltra. 

TVA Process (Refs 85, 93 102). In 1933 the Tennessee Valley Authority inherited a World War I plant designed to produce ammonia by a roundabout and obsolete method in the following steps first the manuf of lime and subsequently f a carbide, then Ca cyan amide, ammonia, nitric acid and finally AN. In 1940 a modern high-pressure ammonia plant was constructed, in which there were used an improved ammonia synthesis cataiysr and a water-gas conversion catalyst. During WW II, the TVA produced... 

Design techniques for an inherently safer plant include improved layouts, inventory reduction, and process improvements. 

Loss prevention principles are dynamic tools, changing as needed to keep up with improving methods. A new edition of the LPP manual, containing several hundred pages, is published every two years. Part of the safety and loss prevention responsibility of Dow employees is to make certain that improved methods appear in the next edition of the LPP manual. The current (1986) edition contains 94 loss protection principles addressing 17 major elements of plant design. 

Various RO design techniques can be employed to maximize permeate quality or recovery percentages. Double pass RO plants permit the permeate to flow through a second set of membranes to further reduce the final permeate TDS, while concentrate recycle RO plants allow some of the brine reject water to recycle back through the plant, which improves the permeate recovery rate. (The reduced flow of brine reject water does, of course, have a proportionally higher TDS level.)... 

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