TRAINING MANUAL – PIPING DOC No.

: 29040-PI-UFR-0023

Rev. : R0
LIFE CYCLE OF PROCESS PLANT
Uhde India Limited Page : 1

CONTENTS

Page

0.0 Cover Sheet 1

1.0 Introduction 2

2.0 Major Phases 2–9

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 TRAINING MANUAL – PIPING DOC No. : 29040-PI-UFR-0023

Rev. : R0
LIFE CYCLE OF PROCESS PLANT
Uhde India Limited Page : 2

1.0 INTRODUCTION:

The life of a chemical process, from concept to commissioning and beyond involves almost
all disciplines of engineering. So wide is the knowledge base requirement and so intricately
integrated these inputs from various specializations are that they make the conventional
engineering disciplines such as chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, metallurgical
engineering, civil engineering, etc. look artificial. A good chemical process engineer needs to
have a very broad knowledge from these disciplines..

The idea of this paper is to take a bird’s eye view of the activities during the life cycle of a
process, especially those that concern a piping engineer..

2.0 MAJOR PHASES:

The major phases in the life cycle of a chemical process can be identified as:

• Determination of Techno-economic feasibility.

• Design Phase.

• Construction Phase.

• Commissioning Phase.

• Operation/Production Phase.

A Piping Engineer has an important role to play during above phases.

TECHNO - ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY

Except perhaps in the early days of metallurgical industry, economic gain has been a major
consideration in the choice and scale of a production activity. Risk factor and pollution
considerations seem to be gaining importance, but these are also due to economic
considerations to a large extent because ignoring these may lead to penalties in future as
harsh as having to stop the activity. So, economics remain the guiding principle. There is
nothing wrong with it because such a profit motive has led to great technological innovations.

For new products, technical feasibility is a first important aspect to study. This can comprise of

• Chemical Path Feasibility

• Engineering/Technological Feasibility

For the first part, especially in the area of organic synthesis, reaction path synthesis
algorithms are available. These would short list a few routes for synthesis which are
thermodynamically feasible. Every thermodynamically feasible reaction need not necessarily
be practical. Because for practicality, it is essentially that the reactions take place at a
suitable rate. Too fast reactions may lead to operational/control problems while too slow
reactions may require huge equipments to be able to process. Means of promoting/inhibiting
reaction rates(catalysts)are often required. A major portion of reactions in chemical industry
are catalytic in nature. A general view of any chemical process plant can be a reactor or
process output from the reactor.
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Once a chemical route which is thermodynamically and kinetically feasible is chosen, a block
flow diagram (BFD), which can be said to be the first engineering diagram in the life cycle of a
process, can be prepared. It simply shows the operations that are involved in the feed
preparation section and product treatment section of a process and the general sequence of
events. The operations could be heat removal or addition, mixing or separation,
pumping/compressing, etc. For a given scale of operation and estimated/expected
performance levels of the equipment to be later selected for these operations, one can put
first estimate of stream characteristics such as flow rates, composition, temperatures,
pressure on the BFD. With this, the process can be said to be born in two dimensions.

The chemically feasible route is yet to be tested for its technical and economic viability.

At a broad level, a decision as to the desirability of batch operation, continuous operation or a

combination has to be taken. Scale is an important issue here, but not the only one. Some
operations are inherently batch/ semibatch in nature, e.g. adsorption. The portion of the flow
sheet involving that operation must operate in that mode. It can suitably coexist with
upstream/downstream continuous operation through provision of suitably sized storage tanks
which do the job of isolation.

Some operations are feasible in batch as well, as continuous mode but strict quality control
(absence of by-products due to side reactions etc.) or variations in feed/products
specifications etc. may tilt the scale in favour of batch operation. For the same scale of
operation, batch process equipment result in much larger process fluid inventory in the plant
at any time. If the fluids being handled are hazardous, it would mean that potential hazards
are higher in batch operation vis-à-vis continuous operation. This aspect is assuming more
and more importance in the emerging zero-risk scenario.

Once the operations and the mode in which these are to be carried out are determined, the
actual methods of achieving the results of an operation are to be decided.

The total mass is obviously conserved in any process including the chemical processes. All
operations in chemical processes wherein the masses of individual components are also
conserved are termed as unit-operations. Phase change is, however, not excluded. Pipe flow,
pumping/compression, mixing, evaporation, distillation, extraction, etc. are unit operations in
this sense.

The heart of any chemical process, a reactor, is, however, an operation where total mass is
conserved but the species mass is not. Some or all the species undergo chemical
transformations. These are called unit processes. For example, nitration, oxidation,
hydrogenation, chlorination, esterification are called unit processes.

The operations in a process as identified in the BFD may be carried out by one or more
candidate unit operations. For example, a component from a mixture may be separated by
distillation or crystallization or adsorption. Which is the best (from economic point of view)? Is
a parallel or series combination of alternatives a better solution?

Even after selecting the appropriate unit operation, one may have to converge on the
appropriate implementation strategies. For example, a mixture may be separated by multiple
distillation columns in several possible ways. Which one is the most economical?

In the case of reactors, choice of equipment is equally important. A fluid phase reaction, for
example may be carried out in a tubular reactor with or without recycle, a stirred pot or a
combination. A reaction involving solid catalyst may be carried out in a packed bed, moving
bed, basket type reactor, a fluidized bed reactor, a riser reactor, etc. which one of these
options is the best for a given situation?
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Plant cost and operating cost are the two components to be considered in the choice of
equipment. It is possible to pose the problem as an optimization problem (cost minimization),
the solution of which gives cost optimal flow sheet configuration. This phase or flow sheet
development is called “Process Synthesis” and is a widely accepted CAD tool in chemical
engineering. Mathematically, these are MILP (Mixed Integer Linear Programming) or MINLP
(Mixed Integer Non Linear Programming)problems.

Selection of other pieces of equipment such as pumps, re-boilers, heat exchangers can be
taken up at and considered as a part of process synthesis stage or postponed to a later stage.

Chemical processes are generally energy intensive. With the rising energy cost, attention has
recently turned to minimization of external energy requirement. These are cooling water,
steam, heating oil, etc. the so called utility streams. It is essential to minimize utility
requirement by encouraging as much process stream to process stream heat transfer as
possible within operational constraints. This aspect is now a well recognized are of “energy
integration” of the process. These problems are also mathematically posed as MILP and
MINLP because it is a HEN (Heat Exchanger Network)synthesis problem.

With these process synthesis tasks accomplished, conceptual design stage of the process is
over. The equipment have been selected and roughly their capacities are known. The capital
costs and the operating costs can be estimated. This information coupled with the raw
material availability and cost and the demand and market prices of products and by products
would help in establishing the economic feasibility of the process.

A techno economically feasible process is now ready to enter the design phase.

DESIGN PHASE

The objective of the design phase is to carry out rigorous engineering calculations for the
chemical engineering aspects as well as mechanical engineering aspects and come out with
rigorous documents (text, drawing)so that the implementation details can be passed on to the
subsequent phases in the life cycle.

It must be remembered that just as it is important to know what is happening inside a

particular piece of equipment (chemical engineering), it is equally important to know whether
the mechanical design and metallurgy of the confining vessel are adequate to allow this to
happen without risks to the other flow sheet components and to the external world. The issues
are inseparably involved and chemical and mechanical engineering have to go hand-in-hand.
Unfortunately, that is normally not the case.

Process design is the detailed material and energy balance calculation across the process
flow sheet. It would also establish the operating conditions, equipment size (not necessarily
shape), utility requirements, etc. With this information appended to the BFD, one gets a
Process Flow Diagrams (PFD).

For processes which are continuous in nature and operate at steady state, engineering
software packages such as flow sheeting programmes, or steady state simulators are
extensively used in optimal process design, i.e. deciding the equipment capacities and
operating conditions for given inputs and desired output specifications.

For example, process design of distillation column would mean calculating the number of
trays, feed tray locations, draw locations, condenser and re-boiler duties, reflux ratio, etc. The
heat exchanger process design would mean calculating the duty, a reactor design would
mean calculating the operating temperature, pressure, reactor volume, reactor heat
removal/addition, etc. These operating/design conditions can be calculated so as to satisfy
some criterion such as minimum operating cost or minimum impurities or minimum pollution
or maximum conversion to desired product or a combination of these.
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These decisions which help to arrive at optimal designs and notably workable designs are
possible only by creating and answering what if situations around each equipment or part or
whole of the flow sheet. For example, we need to try different feed locations for a distillation
column, different reflux ratios etc. and see how the steady state performance (top or bottom
composition)changes. A feed location and/or reflux ratio which gives the desired performance
is one of the candidate designs. There may be several such designs. The one which is
optimum in some sense is then chosen.
Prediction of performance for imputed design and operating conditions by solving the
phenomenological equations of any operation on computer is called simulation. Programs
which can do it for the whole flow sheet simultaneously are the flow sheeting programmes.
They are also termed as steady state simulator because they simulate only the steady state
performance.

Simulation based process design completes one very important phase in the life cycle of a
chemical process. The equipment types and sizes, all stream specifications (flow rate,
composition, temperature, pressure), operating conditions are known at this stage. This, when
incorporated in BFD, converts it to a PFD, an important engineering diagram. It is still 2-D, but
since it has significantly more information content, let us call it a 2 1/4 - D drawing. This is
often considered as an end product of a conventional chemical engineer.

Although widely used in process design, steady state simulators do not, help in decision
making during several important stages of a chemical process. The important ones are start
up and shut down, transition phase during feedstock and product change over, relief and blow
down, control systems synthesis and design, Hazard and operability (HAZOP) studies, etc.
These situations require the knowledge of dynamics of a process. Dynamic process
simulators are being developed and slowly getting acceptance as decision making tools in
these areas.

Although designed for steady state operations, truly speaking, no process operates at a
steady state. This is because there could be disturbances (may be with zero mean) beyond
the control of operators. Even if we have a tight hold on everything, the ambient conditions
(temperature, wind, velocity) change from time to time. This changes the amount of heat
ingress or outgress from the equipment and pipelines which affect the energy balance of the
whole system and system performance would vary if no counter measures are taken. This is
the job of suitably chosen controllers.

Control system design is an important area. System identification, modelling, manipulated

controlled pair selection, controller selection, controllability evaluation are important areas.
Dynamic simulation packages need to be used for this purpose so that CSSD can be done at
process design stage.

HAZOP is another important and now a mandatory activity. It is a qualitative, experience

intensive exercise as of now. It is in the form of deviation analysis. After the process design,
the steady state specifications of each stream in the flow sheet are known. The HAZOP team
exhaustively asks itself questions as to what will happen if these specification deviated on the
positive or negative side of the expected steady state value. It debates the possible causes
and consequences of each such eventuality. Anything which appears to them as likely to lead
to hazardous situations is debated further and possible means of avoiding the same or raising
alarm if it happens so that remedial action can be taken etc. are recommended. This may
lead to recommendation of additional instrumentation on lines and equipment, Hi-Lo alarms
and trips etc. May be required to be provided.

The idea of HAZOP is to foresee hazardous situation and take measures and abundant
precaution to avoid them and increase process safety.

The requirement of monitoring instruments for providing signals to controllers or also to

continuously monitor process performance is identified.
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The PFD shows the flow rates, composition, temperature and pressure of all feed product and
intermediate streams. The properties of these streams such as density and viscosity can
therefore be calculated. Hydraulic calculations to decide the pressure drop due to flow from
one unit to another can be calculated at this stage. Pipe sizing which is a balance between
operating cost (energy lost due to flow in pipes) and capital cost (function of pipe diameter,
thickens and pipe run) can be carried out.

The pressure drop correlation to be used depends on the nature of flowing medium
incompressible, compressible, slurry, two phase, three phase etc.

Reasonably good co-relations are available for calculating pressure drop for single phase
compressible or incompressible fluid flow. For two phase or three phase flow, co-relations are
available but their predictive power is doubtful. Possibility of various flow regimes,
uncertainties regarding regime transition boundaries and lack of date make prediction of flow
hydraulics very difficult for 2 and multiphase flow. All one can do is to use the best available
co-relations. Unfortunately, a large percentage of flow situations in industry are at least two
phase flows.

The HAZOP findings, process requirement or the available reliability data may require a stand
by unit provision in the flow sheet. This is quite often the case with pumps. These call for
appropriate piping also.

To make sure that a batch or semi batch operation can coexist with upstream and
downstream continuous units, storage tanks need to be provided as was mentioned earlier.
Some time, a particular requirement of an equipment may require such a provision. For
example, to ensure that the pump suction line not run dry in the event of upstream process
upsets. Start up or shut down conditions may also call for intermediate storage tanks.

A PFD modified further to indicate stand by equipment, storage tanks, instrumentation and
control, pipe sizes, valves, etc. becomes a P & ID. Piping & Instrumentation Diagram. P & ID
may also show relative elevation of various equipment, number of trays and feed tray location
in a distillation column, etc.

P & ID is a very important schematic during the design stage of a process. In fact this is what
is stored and updated throughout the life cycle of a process. It is considered as a cardinal
drawing for various sections in a design organization. It also is the basic drawing for
subsequent equipment design, plant layout, unit layout, piping layout, bill of material
(BOM),insulation calculations etc. Project engineering literally begins with this drawing in
hand.

Piping Engineer must be thoroughly conversant with P & ID. Each organization may have its
own nomenclature and practices for making P & Ids. But the differences are mostly in
representation and not in the information content.

P & ID also shows the other details of the pipe lines such as material of construction, service,
etc. The material of construction can be decided based on the fluid that a pipeline is supposed
to carry and the temperature pressure conditions. The materials of construction for equipment
similarly are service dependent.

Although a piping engineer begins with a P & ID, it would be desirable if he has some
knowledge of the process background which led to the P & ID.

At this stage, the capacity of each equipment, the temperature pressure that it needs to
withstand, the material of construction, the inlet outlet ports and their sizes that need to be
provided, the necessary details of other internals/externals (such as trays in a distillation
column, packing in an absorber, stirrer in a reactor, jacket around kettle, etc.)are available.
The detailed mechanical design of each equipment leading to fabrication drawing can now be
taken up.
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The equipment design falls in the area of pressure vessel design. The pressure vessels are
classified as fired and unfired depending on whether they come in contact with naked flame or
not. Vessels subjected to inside pressure higher that ambient pressure and inside pressure
lower than ambient (i.e. vacuum service) are to be designed separately. There are separate
design formulae for vessels subjected to internal or external pressure.

Typical vessels shapes used in process industry are cylindrical and spherical. Spherical shells
are self closing while the two ends of a cylindrical shell needed to be closed using closure of
appropriate shapes. Depending on shell dimension and service conditions, the closures may
be hemispherical, ellipsoidal, torispherical, conical or flat.

The closures need to be tightly fixed to the shell. Flanges are provided on the closure and the
shell for this purpose. Various types of flanges are possible and appropriate choice is
important. Ingress of ambient air in the vessel or outgress of inside fluid to the atmosphere
must be avoided. Apart from loss of material and/or off spec product, such a leakage could be
hazardous. If flange surfaces are pressed against each other, no matter how well they are
pressed or how well they are mechanized, the flanges would leak. This is so because of the
microscopic irregularities on the flange surfaces which act as channels for leakage. These
channels need to be blocked by providing a softer material which is squeezed between the
two flanges so as to flow and fill up the irregularities on the flange surface. The gasket must
flow but not be squeezed out of the flanges during bolting up conditions. Also during
operation, some of the bolt tension and pressure on gasket is reduced. The gasket should still
not leak.

The pressure vessel design would involve calculating the shell wall thickness, closure type
selection and thickness calculations, selection of suitable gasket material with adequate yield
stress and gasket factor, choice of gasket location (Mean gasket diameter), gasket thickness,
gasket width, placement of bolts (bolt circle diameter), bolt material selection, number of bolts.
But this is not all.

A vessel need to have opening to serve as inlet, outlet ports as well as for drainage, hand
holes, man holes, etc. These could be on the shell or closures. The shell and closure wall
thickness have been designed to ensure that the stresses in the walls even at the weakest
ports (along welding, along longitudinal seam or girth seam) do not exceed the allowable
stress value even after corrosion or inspite of non-uniform plate thickness (mill tolerance), etc.
When openings are cut, stresses concentrate along the edges of the opening and may
exceed allowable stress value. Provision of extra thickness to counter this may be expensive.
The theoretical finding that the stress concentration is confined to a circle double the opening
diameter is used to strengthen the shell wall only in that region by welding a pad around the
opening. The thickness calculation of such a reinforcing pad is a part of pressure vessel
calculation.

Not every opening need to be compensated.

In the pressure vessels subjected to internal pressure, tensile stresses are developed in the
wall. In the case of vessels subjected to external pressure, compressive stresses are
developed. The vessel wall would have a tendency to buckle. To avoid this, stiffening rings
may be provided, Spacing between stiffening rings and cross section geometry of the
stiffening ring are to be designed using appropriate design procedures.

Stiffening rings may be provided externally or internally. Internal stiffening rings may also be
used as tray supports in distillation columns, etc.

Above design procedures may normally be adequate for not so tall vessels. For tall vessels
which may most adequately be called towers, several other considerations come into picture.

Tougher distillations require lot of trays in the column requiring to install very tall columns. Tall
column design is thus important.
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The wind velocities increase as one goes away from ground level. A tall column with its
insulation, platforms and ladders provide obstruction to wind, which in turn exerts force on the
column. The column firmly supported at the skirt top bends as a result. This induces tensile
stresses along the longitudinal seam on the windward side and compressive stresses along
longitudinal seam on the leeward side. These additional stresses along with the stresses due
to internal pressure should not exceed the allowable value. This may have to be ensured by
provision of additional shell wall thickness.

The thickness requirement is lowest at the top. To minimize metal requirement, the tower may
be divided into sections with the bottom most section having highest thickness and the top
just enough to withstand internal pressure.

Tall tower design also needs to be checked for seismic effects which induce additional
stresses along longitudinal seam. The seismic zone and the period of vibration decide the
seismic coefficient. Wall thickness may have to be amended to take care of seismisity.

It is assumed that highest wind load and worst seismic effects do not occur simultaneously.

The vibration period and deflection of the tall columns also need to be kept within tolerable
limits. This can be done by providing a suitably thick skirt.

Eccentric loads on the column due to side connection also causes bending moment at the
skirt column connection and need to be considered.

After attention is paid to each and every aspect a pressure vessel fabrication drawing is
issued for fabrication to begin at an early stage. Equipment fabrication is time consuming.
Also, in the field work, equipment need to be in place quite early because only then the pipe
routing job begins.

Pipe wall thickness design is similarly carried out by treating pipes as cylindrical vessels.
Flange calculations need not be done in the case of pipes as these are provided by the codes
in most cases. Once the nominal diameter and schedule of all pipes in a plant are known, a
first bill of material for pipe length requirement can be prepared. This is even before the actual
routing and isometrics are frozen. Additional quantities can be procured once the isometrics
are finalized.

In all the above calculations, design pressure and design temperature have to be suitably
chosen. For the equipment, hydrostatic test pressures are also to be recommended.

With the completion of these calculations and the design documents, the design phase can
be said to be over. The pipeline rouging is however not yet decided.

CONSTRUCTION PHASE

Further analytical work needs to be done before the final blueprint of 3-D plant layout is
finalized and construction begins. Some of the activities given here may well be considered as
belonging to the design phase itself.

The choice of a plant location, if such a choice exists, is governed by politico socio economic
considerations. The basic approach is to assign weight factors to various considerations and
to select a site which scores maximum points.

Knowing the site and its neighbourhood, a plant layout can be worked out. Sites of the major
equipment have to be decided on the site map. Apart from the equipments and offsites, other
requirements such as control room, fire station, hospital, etc are decided at this stage. The
road map of the site also emerges. Certain rules for interunit distances which emerged from
past experiences, certain guidelines for dusty, fireprone, noisy, hazardous equipments
location are adhered to.
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A piping engineer is deeply involved in plant layout as it is one most important factor which
governs the piping layout and piping costs.

It is important to orient the unit properly at its assigned site. This activity is called unit layout or
equipment layout. Accessibility, ease of maintenance, implications on piping layout, etc. are
the consideration here. Each equipment has to be given individual attention by always
keeping in mind that it is a member of the whole. Guidelines have emerged based on past
practices and experiences.

A piping engineer is again deeply involved in unit layout as it has more direct influence on the
piping layout, which is the next activity.

After the units have been located and appropriately oriented on paper, the layout of the veins
and arteries of the plant, the pipes, have to be laid out. It is not as simple as connecting the
outlet of one equipment to the inlet of the next in operational sequence by the shortest
possible route. In fact, such direct connections are exceptional and with reason.

Most industrial hazards originate with failure of the piping system. The equipment are fairly
rigid and well foundationed. During cold assembly, all pieces are in place. When the operation
begins, the high pressure temperature conditions inside the equipment induce stresses and
things literally move. Pipelines being the weakest elements in the plant, bear the brunt of
these operational loads. It is therefore essential that each pipeline routing, especially the
critical and long ones, are properly designed so that they can sustain the operational load. It
could be due to their own weight, vibrations in the equipment to which they are connected.
Thermal expansion which gets restricted due to rigidity of and connection, etc. All these
factors collectively should not lead to stresses in the pipe exceeding the allowable limits
during operation.

Weight analysis and stress analysis need to be carried out on pipelines. It may lead to the
requirement of re-routing the pipeline, or provision of supports, hangers expansion bellows
etc. Stress analysis or flexibility analysis is now facilitated by computer packages.

A software model of 3-D layout of a plant is gaining in importance. Unlike P & ID which is a
schematic, a 3-D model is a dimensional graphics and can be made in all details of the
envisaged plant. A 3-D model has all the data associated with a plant. It offers easy
visualization of the plant structure. It allows checks on ergonomics. In conjunction with stress
analysis software, each pipeline can be checked for adequate flexibility and its route modified
if called for. Details of civil structures can be incorporated. Interference between pipelines and
pipelines or pipelines and equipment or civil structure can be checked and corrected Isometric
drawings of each pipeline can be derived from the 3-D drawings with Orthographic drawings,
different views can be created.

The 3-D software model has all the details of plant including actual pipe routing. Bill of
material for pipes and piping elements (pipe run, piping elements such as elbows, Tees,
specialities, flanges, valves, etc), procured equipment (pumps, etc) can be easily extracted.

The progress of project implementation can be monitored using 3-D drawings and field
information.

Specification sheets for piping elements can be prepared using a 3-D model.

3-D model of the plant is a complete database and visual of the plant that would be and its
use would increase in coming years.

The construction phase involves the actual placement of equipment and routing of pipelines.
Welding and fabrication, painting for corrosion prevention, thermal insulation to prevent heat
ingress or outgress are the field activities that a piping engineer need to be familiar with.