Process Engineering and Industrial Management

This context is really important, as the industry has a crucial role in solving the problems of excessive dependence on fossil fuels, meeting the challenge of sustainable development, taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the revolutions in biotechnology and information technology, and harnessing the power of change and innovation – the big questions of our time. This book is a collection of experiences of professionals from academia and industry.

Purpose, structure, typology

The legal form of the company determines the hierarchy within the company and the relationships with third parties. The size of the company can be measured by the amount of capital, turnover and number of employees.

Figure 1.1. The product seen by the customer

A centennial history

Thomas Newcomen, a blacksmith by trade, is considered "the Father of the Industrial Revolution". The UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) simply defines governance as – the exercise of economic, political and administrative authority.

Our planet

The images of the Earth taken by astronauts in the years 1968-1970 have put ecology at the fore. This happens in the North Atlantic, where the water cools, its density increases, it will then sink to the bottom of the ocean on its way to Antarctica and reappear in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Figure 1.5. Systemic analysis of the living organism [DUR 98]

The company of tomorrow. Some thoughts

One of the major projects in the world, the most discreet, perhaps, is that of IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards), financial instruments whose role is to, among other things, ensure the accounting transparency of companies, the correct validation of assets and liabilities to maintain trust restore citizens who are asked to invest their savings [LEM 10]. The West cannot impose its politics and undoubtedly its vision on the rest of the world. The engineer and especially the process engineer will be expected to contribute to the evolution of the world.

Bibliography

The big functions of the company still have good years ahead, because people need more and more references as everything will become complicated in the long run. This new process unit will be integrated into an existing facility where process units A and B are already operating. The purpose of this chapter is to describe the two basic modes of business: the operational and entrepreneurial functions.

Operational mode

Counsel for the victims' families said that “the disaster was destined to happen. NOTE.– The reader may wish to consult articles on the Convention on Risk Management (Convention SE) in Techniques de l'Ingénieur. EXAMPLE 2.– The temperature of the reactor shown in figure 2.7 is normally 90°C, it should not exceed 95°C, above which there is a risk of overpressure due to decomposition of the reaction mixture.

EXAMPLE 1.- The explosion of a mixture of gas and air will require an ignition source of a certain energy level. EXAMPLE 2.– The loss of circulation of the loop in figure 2.7 can be due to a mechanical fault in the pump OR lack of coolant.

Figure 2.3. Organization chart of the organization by operations

Entrepreneurial mode, project management – the operational/entrepreneurial conflictconflict

It is a qua non condition for its survival; it is about influencing the operation of the company to give it a new direction. This applies to preliminary projects or studies that are dealt with in chapter 6, 'The industrialization process: preliminary projects'. The project team often consists of members of the company and members 'from' company activities (Figure 2.13).

Figure 2.12. The project and the major business functions

Bibliography

In this context, they are obliged to define their strategies on the global "village" scale, which is still suffering from the repercussions of the financial crisis generated in September 2008 in the United States. He is the focus of all concerns; his satisfaction is the major challenge of the supplier. This requires increased flexibility on the part of the company and higher quality products, therefore it requires its operating mode to be constantly reconsidered.

Systemic view of the industrial company Let us look at Figure

For there to be a profit, the sales proceeds should cover the cost of invested capital, the direct and indirect costs of the plant, not to mention the costs of administration, research and marketing.

Strategy and strategic analysis of the company

The SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) considers all the criteria indicated by each letter of the acronym. The SWOT analysis examines the four key factors of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of each sector of the company. The relevance of the SWOT analysis is based on the creativity of the working group and its wealth of ideas.

Figure 3.2. Principle of the strategic analysis of the company (technical aspects).

Development of the strategic plan: its deliverables

The strengths can be due to a solid patent portfolio, recognized brands, integration of raw materials, loyal customers and so on. The development of the strategic plan leads to a set of preliminary projects whose study methodology is the subject of chapter 6. An important result of the strategic analysis is the study of the technologies used and the resulting vocations.

Technological choices and vocations

Technology originally meant the rational study of techniques that were synonymous with manual knowledge; the knowledge of the carpenter, mason and glass maker. This is the company's wealth of knowledge that it strives to preserve and develop. This is one of the first responsibilities of the human resources department, which is responsible for the selection, training, development of staff and defining the company.

Table 3.2. Characteristics of two companies: company A with basic chemicals – company B with specialty chemicals

Bibliography

The questions that will be raised by strategic analysis proposals constitute many preliminary projects, studies that must go through a selection process. These preliminary projects or studies will be evaluated in terms of cost, risk and opportunity.

History of chemical engineering and process engineering

In the early 20th century, chemical engineering was born in the United States. Little of the concept of "Unit Operation" in an internal MIT report in 1915 represented. The tremendous development, at the beginning of the 20th century, of the oil industry and the pre-chemical industry, which used the raw materials coming from the refineries, gave chemical engineering an unprecedented boost.

Figure 4.1. Simplified diagram of a latex plant (capacity: 300 T/day)

Process engineering

Process engineering has also developed tools and concepts specific to it, such as the concept of a theoretical stage or counterflow to ensure systematic contact between phases. This list would be incomplete if the remarkable progress of process engineering in the 20th century did not introduce, in addition to chemical engineering, specific technologies that could be described as classical. It should also be noted that process engineering is currently evolving in a highly competitive economy in which most disciplines require multidisciplinary teams.

The chemical reactor

This reactor is also said to be closed because the reactants are charged at the beginning and remain in the reactor until the end of the reaction. The solid can act as a catalyst whose role is to increase the rate of the reaction. For this reason, it is necessary to consider the morphology of the catalyst (balls, cylinders, etc.), its porosity, the means of connecting the liquids/catalyst, which must be strong enough so that the diffusion process is not limiting process.

Figure 4.2. (Discontinuous) closed reactor

Bioreactors

Corresponding bioreactors differ little from chemical reactors except that they operate at moderate temperatures (generally less than 70°C), due to heat-sensitive enzymes. Indeed, the fermentation of sweet juices for the purpose of producing alcohol has been used (for the happiness and misery of mankind...) probably since man first gathered the fruit and squeezed it to extract its juice. Thus, the production of penicillin in a 50 m3 reactor will present a number of problems for the process engineer.

Figure 4.7. Laboratory bioreactor used to test the raw materials and new production methods

Transportation and transfers

These can be tube heat exchangers, plate heat exchangers, spiral heat exchangers, cross flow heat exchangers, and so on. Station utilities are important for large tonnage products such as chlorine, sodium hydroxide, and so on. Liquid-liquid extraction is an important operation in fermentation to extract the active ingredient from the broth, in inorganic and rare earth industry.

Figure 4.9 illustrates the resistances to transfers: through the film of the warm and cold sides and through the metal of the tube wall.

Unit operations

The bubble cap forces the vapor released by the reboiler at the bottom of the column to bubble into the liquid. In fact, we know how to produce membranes that contain thin sheets of a few tenths of a millimeter thick that, by playing on complex phenomena such as absorption, dissolution, porosity, etc., "sort" the molecules that can pass through them. This technique is also one of the ways to distinguish fresh water from salt water.

Figure 4.10. Crystallization-filtration-drying typical unit

Separation processes: process engineering and the new challenges for life sciencessciences

Let us now consider the effect of a large number of cleaning steps on solvent consumption. Evaluating the performance of implemented processes leads to another challenge: the development of analytical techniques. Therefore, in any case, it is necessary to develop methods that enable the detection and quantification of the relevant molecules.

Figure 4.16. Picture of an installation of continuous separation by chromatography;

Acknowledgments

In fact, the analytical tests are essential to know the quality of the product obtained. To illustrate this key role, we can cite many analytical tests in the chromatographic operations of fractionation of blood plasma proteins. In the case, e.g. with the purification of a molecule derived from a sap obtained from the leaves of a plant, the nature and concentration of other species present in the medium may not always be known and may vary from one crop to another.

Bibliography

The author would like to thank Ms. Laurence Muhr, Associate Professor at ENSIC, for writing the last volume devoted to separations in the living world. He also expresses his sincere gratitude to Jacques Breysse, who has gone through the whole chapter, added to it and commented on the author for his extensive experience in this field.

Introduction

This chapter deals with the first phase, namely process development: the fundamentals of industrialization. Process development methodologies have evolved over time, with the goal of improving the process to minimize development time and associated costs while maintaining a very good management of risks associated with extrapolation.

The various stages of process development: from research to the foundations of industrializationof industrialization

The pre-study (or pre-development process)

The first draft of the process flow diagram is an opportunity to highlight technical problems and potential obstacles that will need to be removed later in the development of the process. The choice of reactor technology also includes a first assessment of the stability of the catalytic system. The pre-development phase also deals with the management of products and especially by-products and potential process emissions.

Figure 5.2. Example of a reactor using a heterogeneous catalyst in a fixed bed for the hydrogenation of fuels © IFPEN

Development stage of the process 1. Introduction1.Introduction

Another important effect in reducing the scale of a reactor is the effect of the reactor walls. This model will be chosen according to the characteristics of the process (water phase, hydrocarbon phase and the presence of ionic species). For example, in the case of the development of the CO2 capture process, we use an aqueous solvent containing ionic species.