OVERVIEW

The process industries are among the most important manufacturing facilities. They span a wide range of industries including chemical, petroleum, gas, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, food, microelectronics, metal, textile, and forestry products. The performance of these industries is strongly dependent on their engineering and engineers. So, what are the primary responsibilities of process engineers in the process industries? Many process engineers would indicate that their role in the process industries is to design and operate industrial processes and make them work faster, better, cheaper, safer, and greener. All of these tasks lead to more competitive processes with desirable profit margins and market share. Specifically, these responsibilities may be expressed through the following specific objectives:

• Process innovation

• Profitability enhancement

• Yield improvement

• Capital-productivity increase

• Quality control, assurance, and enhancement

• Resource conservation

• Pollution prevention

• Safety

• Debottlenecking

These objectives are also closely related to the seven themes identified by Keller and Bryan (2000) as the key drivers for process-engineering research, development, and changes in the primary chemical process industries. These themes are:

• Reduction in raw-material cost

• Reduction in capital investment

• Reduction in energy use

• Increase in process flexibility and reduction in inventory

• Ever greater emphasis on process safety

• Increased attention to quality

• Better environmental performance

The question is how? What are the challenges, required methodologies, and enabling tools needed by engineers to carry out their responsibilities. In order to shed some light on these issues, let us consider the...