Proprietary equipment

The flare system furnished as standardized or proprietary equipment shall in general follow the intent of this specification, but may differ in some details by following Supplier s standards for design conditions. However, any difference in detail shall be in accordance with established Oil and Gas Industry Standard Practice. 

Unless employed by one of the specialist equipment manufacturers, the chemical engineer is not normally involved in the detailed design of proprietary equipment. His job will be to select and specify the equipment needed for a particular duty consulting with the vendors to ensure that the equipment supplied is suitable. He may be involved with the vendor s designers in modifying standard equipment for particular applications for example, a standard tunnel dryer designed to handle particulate solids may be adapted to dry synthetic fibres. 

In this chapter the emphasis is put on equipment selection, rather than equipment design as most of the equipment described is proprietary equipment. Design methods... 

Separation of two liquid phases, immiscible or partially miscible liquids, is a common requirement in the process industries. For example, in the unit operation of liquid-liquid extraction the liquid contacting step must be followed by a separation stage (Chapter 11, Section 11.16). It is also frequently necessary to separate small quantities of entrained water from process streams. The simplest form of equipment used to separate liquid phases is the gravity settling tank, the decanter. Various proprietary equipment is also used to promote coalescence and improve separation in difficult systems, or where emulsions are likely to form. Centrifugal separators are also used. 

The papers in this section represent the theory and current industry practices in the separation process and in separator design. Because separation is such a basic requirement for the oil and gas industry, a wealth of information has been published concerning the process and the various design techniques used in the manufacture of separation equipment. Some of these techniques are proprietary, however, and the details of the design are not readily available. For instance. British Petroleum has done considerable design and testing of cyclone-type separation equipment in recent years with the objective of miniaturizing the equipment for use on offshore platforms. For further details on this and other proprietary equipment, one must contact the manufacturer or licensee of the equipment. 

Proprietary equipment is provided "off the shelf in limited sizes and capacities. Special sizes that would fit particular applications more closely often arc more expensive than a larger... 

Chemical process equipment is of two kinds custom-designed and built or proprietary off the shelf. Unlike custom-designed equipment, proprietary equipment is often developed without the benefit of much theory and is fitted to job requirements also without the benefit of much theory. The process design of proprietary equipment, as considered in this book, establishes its required performance and is then a process of selection from the manufacturer s offerings. Since more than one kind of equipment often is suitable for particular applications and may be available from several manufacturers, comparisons of equipment and typical applications are cited liberally. 

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