SECTION THREE Plant Design

In this section, three industrial case studies are described which demonstrate the application of the modeling procedure and of WOMS in different settings. The first two case studies address different types of design processes. The third one deals with the start-up of a chemical plant, i.e., with an operational process. 

A detailed description of the Phillips pilot plant pipe-loop slurry reactor (Figure 5.11) is found in U.S. Patent 3,248,179. The design consisted of three 4.5 foot, 10 inch, inner-diameter sections and one 4.5 foot, 12 inch inner-diameter pipe which contained the reactor pumping unit as one of the two vertical sections of the design, with either n-pentane or n-hexane as the slurry solvent. 

Catalyst Section. The design criteria for the HYGAS plant methanation section were developed in the late 1960 s (10). At that time, three commercially available nickel methanation catalysts and one ruthenium... 

All the products of human ingenuity in the design of polymers pale beside the products of nature. Plants and animals employ a tremendous variety of long-chain molecules with different functions some for strnctnral strength, others to act as catalysts, and still others to provide instructions for the synthesis of vital components of the cell. In this section we discuss these three important classes of natural polymers polysaccharides, proteins, and nucleic acids. 

The Fina/Badger distillation section consists of three distillation columns. All the columns are designed to operate under vacuum to minimize temperature and polymer formation. The first column in the sequence splits the benzene and toluene byproducts from the unconverted EB and styrene product. The benzene and toluene mixture is typically sent to an integrated EB plant where it is further fractionated. In this case, the benzene by-product is ultimately consumed in the EB unit and the toluene becomes a by-product stream from the EB plant. 

The family of the GTHTR300 plant variants are based on three shared system technologies including reactor, helium gas turbine and, in the case of hydrogen production, the IS process system. This section discusses the underlying system designs and related research and development activities. 

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