Overview

The contemporary process engineer has to be an all-around generalist. This handbook contains basic information on items that cause or assist chemical reactions, such as chillers. In today's environment, information on additional sectors is also required to help the plant engineer function.

To begin with, besides the components in a plant that produce required chemical and physical state changes, such as fractionating distillation columns and reactors, the plant engineer needs to know the process plant machinery that transports and delivers raw material and products. It is this machinery that is very often the bane of the engineer's existence. The good news is that with a little knowledge one can keep most of it running.

When that happens, the process plant engineer may have to troubleshoot equipment if the plant does not have a rotating machinery engineer. That may be why so many of the process plant engineers I talked with asked me to include material on condition monitoring and life-cycle (of machinery components) assessment. These two items alone can save a plant a huge amount of its costs per plant operating hour, if properly utilized. I have included some of my notes from two of my basic courses on these subjects.

Interestingly enough, plant problems are common at system interfaces at expansion joints, rather than at what they connect, and at gearboxes, couplings, and torque measurers, rather than the parent items of machinery they link. Also, certain accessories can be weak points if improperly applied. Air filtration can protect a...