Selection 5 Plant Location

The primary siting factors which influence the selection of a plant location are as follows environmental considerations, labor avadabihty and productivity, raw material avadabihty, proximity to market, property cost, accessibdity to transportation, tax iacentives, electric power avadabdity and cost, and living conditions. 

Other important parameters that govern the selection and location of the plant are distance from transmission lines, location from fuel port or pipe lines, and type of fuel availability. Site configuration is generally not a constraint. Periodically, sites are encountered where one plant configuration or another is best suited. 

Second, Reinhardt and Hubbard (1998) performed a prediction using neural networks. From some statistical consideration, they selected three locations for prokaryotes (cytoplasmic, extracellular, and periplasmic) and four locations for eukaryotes, excluding plants (cytoplasmic, extracellular, mitochondrial, and nuclear). They did not include the membrane proteins because they can be distinguished rather reliably using existing methods. One potential problem of their analysis is that they only excluded sequence pairs with more than 90% identity. Nevertheless, the distinctions between pairs of groups were rather clear. The high accuracy between nuclear and cytoplasmic proteins was especially impressive. 

Unlike common industrial parks where factories are selected simply on the basis of their willingness to share the real estate, environmentally balanced industrial complexes (EBIC) are a selective collection of compatible industrial plants located together in a complex so as to minimize environmental impacts and industrial production costs [24,33]. These objectives are accomplished by utilizing the waste materials of one plant as the raw materials for another with a minimum of transportation, storage, and raw materials preparation costs. It is obvious that when an industry neither needs to treat its wastes, nor is required to import, store, and pretreat its raw materials, its overall production costs must be reduced significantly. Additionally, any material reuse costs in an EBIC will be difficult to identify and more easily absorbed into reasonable production costs. 

Haigh RW (1990) Selecting a US Plant Location The Management Decision Process in Foreign Companies. Columbia Journal of World Business 25 22-31... 

Flood and fire protection. Many industrial plants are located along rivers or near large bodies of water, and there are risks of flood or hurricane damage. Before selecting a plant site, the regional history of natural events of this type should be examined and the consequences of such occurrences considered. Protection from losses by fire is another important factor in selecting a plant location. In case of a major fire, assistance from outside fire departments should be available. Fire hazards in the immediate area surrounding the plant site must not be overlooked. 

The state of the art, today, is based on an all catalytic lube plant, which does not rely on solvent processing. An example of such a plant is Mobil s Jurong plant located in Singapore (11). The configuration of the plant relies on the use of a lube hydrocracker, coupled with a selective catalytic dewaxing unit (Fig. 8.2). 

The direct oxidation of propane has fewer restrictions on plant location since the alkane is easier to ship over long distances as the compressed liquid. Its oxidation to acrolein, acrylic acid and acrylonitrile is the subject of numerous studies. The synthesis of acrylonitrile has already been developed to the stage of a demonstration plant. Catalysts are based on V-Sb mixed oxides, with additional metal promoters. Propylene is generally recognized as the intermediate through which acrylonitrile is obtained. Selectivities are close to 50-60% at ca. 20% propane conversion. 

Design should follow some prearranged plan based upon space requirements, selections and specifications of process equipment, the layout of process equipment according to processing flows, plant location, plant... 

The rapid rise in freight rates during the past 10 years has been a strong contributing factor in causing many of the larger older plants, located in cities, to seek new locations. Oftentimes, a location is selected outside... 

Once the plant location area and plot plans have been chosen, as explained in Chaps. 5 and 7, the specific site must be selected and developed for installation of structures. Preliminary exploration of the subsurface conditions should be done prior to purchase of a piece of land, since foundation construction may be abnormally high if the bearing load of the underground strata is poor, even though the surface conditions appear satisfactory. Topographical maps of the site to establish plant grades and excavation, together with transportation facility locations, frost-line, and water-table information, are other important site data required. Some detailed aspects of these factors will be presented next. 

Few basic decisions affect the hazard potential of a plant more than the initial choice of technology. Early in development there is a great deal of freedom in the selection of chemistry, solvents, raw materials, process intermediates, unit operations, plant location, and other process parameters. As the process moves through its life cycle, it becomes more difficult and expensive to change the basic process. 

Phase II - Pilot Plant Testing. This phase of coal gasification materials evaluation involves exposure of metals and refractories in selected test locations in current pilot plants. Corrosion testing in this effort began during 1974 with four pilot plants and now involves six HYGAS, CONOCO COAL, Synthane, BI-GAS, Steam-Iron, and Battelle. 

The cooling systems required to remove the low- temperature process heat depend heavily on the plant location. The availability of water (wells, rivers, sea water) and the meteorological conditions are important factors for the selection of an optimum cooling system. 

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