Introduction to Chemical Engineering

1.0 Definitions:

What is chemical engineering?

1. A branch of engineering which involves the design and operation of large scale chemical plants,
petrochemical refineries, and the like.”(standard dictionary)

2. is a branch of engineering that is Concerned with Application of basic sciences (math, chemistry,
physics & biology) and engineering principles to cause substances to undergo required changes in their
chemical or physical composition, structure, or energy content to give useful products to solve practical
problems for many societal needs.

3. Chemical engineering is the field of applied science that employs physical, chemical, and
biochemical rate processes for the betterment of humanity.

This is a sweeping statement, and it contains two essential concepts: rate processes and betterment of
humanity. The second is straightforward and is at the heart of all engineering. The engineer designs
processes and tangible objects that meet the real or perceived needs of the people.

Some civil engineers design structures. Some mechanical engineers design engines. Some electrical
engineers design power systems and circuits. The popular perception of the chemical engineer is someone
who designs and operates processes for the production of chemicals and petrochemicals. This is
historically accurate but it is much more than that. For example,
The processing of organic (crude oils, natural gas, lumber), inorganic (air, ores, salts) and biological
(starches, fats, cellulose) materials into a wide range of useful commodity products, such as plastics,
fuels, pharmaceuticals, chemical additives, fibres, fertilizers and foods, is carried out in a controlled
process within a framework of environmental sustainability.
An example is the fate of medication, and the procedures that optimize the delivery of drug to the active
site, is an example of pharmacokinetics, which has been an area of chemical engineering practice since
the 1960s.

Everyone is familiar with the notion that medication taken orally must pass through the digestive system
and across membranes into the bloodstream, after which it must be transported to the
relevant location in the body (a tumour, a bacterial infection, etc.) where it binds to
a receptor or reacts chemically. The residue is transported to an organ, where it is metabolized, and the
metabolic products are transported across other membranes and excreted from the body, perhaps in the
urine. Each of these processes takes time, and the rate of each step plays an important role in determining
the efficacy of the medication. Chemical engineers are concerned with all these natural and man-
made physicochemical processes that are governed by the rates at which the physical transport of
mass and energy, chemical and biochemical transformations occur.
All engineers employ mathematics, physics, and the engineering art to overcome technical problems in a
safe and economical fashion. Yet, it is the chemical engineer alone that draws upon the vast and powerful
science of chemistry to solve a wide range of problems. The strong technical and social ties that bind
chemistry and chemical engineering are unique in the fields of science and technology. This marriage

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between chemists and chemical engineers has been beneficial to both sides and has rightfully brought the
envy of the other engineering fields.

Chemical Engineers Take Chemistry Out of the Laboratory

The principles of chemistry, mathematics, and physics are applied by chemical engineers to design and
operate large-scale chemical manufacturing processes. They translate processes developed in the
laboratory and adapt production methods from the small scale in the laboratory into large-scale
practical applications for the production of such products as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastics,
medicines, detergents, and fuels; design plants to maximize yield and minimize costs; evaluate plant
operations for performance and product quality. In the chemical manufacturing sector, the chemist may
be in the lab, testing for the development of new products, but the design of the industrial manufacturing
technology for new products, the scaling up of production as well as improving the technologies for
manufacturing old products, is the chemical engineers’ expertise.

1.1 History

The Industrial Revolution (18th century) led to an unprecedented escalation in demand, both with regard
to quantity and quality, for bulk chemicals such as sulphuric acid and soda ash. This meant two things:
one, the size of the activity and the efficiency of operation had to be enlarged, and two, serious
alternatives to batch processing, such as continuous operation, had to be examined. This created the need
for an engineer who was not only conversant with how machines behaved, but also understood chemical
reactions and transport phenomena (how substances came together to react, how the required
conditions could be achieved, etc.), and the influence the equipment had on how these processes
operated on the large scale.
Chemical engineering began as a distinct profession at the start of the twentieth century, although
elements of what are now considered to be core chemical engineering have existed for centuries and
more (fermentation, for example, is mentioned in the Bible and in Homer). The discipline began as
something of an amalgam, combining chemistry having an industrial focus with the mechanical design of
equipment. The invention of the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) process by Warren K. Lewis and Edward
R. Gilliland in the late 1930s was one such advance.
As noted previously, fermentation processes have existed throughout human history. The first industrial-
scale fermentation process (other than alcoholic beverages) seems to have been the production of acetone
and butanol through the anaerobic fermentation of corn by the organism Clostridium acetobutylicum, a
conversion discovered in 1915 by the British chemist ChaimWeizmann.

War is, unfortunately, a recurring theme in identifying the great chemical engineering advances in the
twentieth century. The Japanese conquest of the rubber plantations of south-east Asia at the start of World
War II necessitated the industrial development of synthetic rubber, and a U.S.-government-sponsored
industrial academic consortium set out in 1942 to produce large amounts of GR-S rubber, a polymer
consisting of 75% butadiene and 25% styrene. The chemists and chemical engineers in the consortium
improved the production of butadiene, increased the rate of polymerization of the butadiene-styrene
molecule, controlled the molecular weight and molecular-weight distribution of the polymer, and

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developed additives that enabled the synthetic rubber to be processed on conventional natural rubber
machinery.

1.1.1 The Chemical Engineer Today

The chemical engineer of the first half of the twentieth century was generally concerned with the large-
scale production of chemicals, usually through classical chemical synthesis but sometimes through
biochemical synthesis. The "Big Four" engineering fields consist of civil, mechanical, electrical, and
chemical engineers. Of these, chemical engineers are numerically the smallest group. However, this
relatively small group holds a very prominent position in many industries, and chemical engineers are, on
average, the highest paid of the "Big Four“ .
Chemical engineers play important roles today in every industry processes and service in which chemistry
or biology is a factor, including semiconductors, nanotechnology, food, agriculture, environmental
control, pharmaceuticals, energy, personal care products, finance, medicine – and, of course, traditional
chemicals and petrochemicals.
 Electrical: The production of semiconductors is driven by chemical engineers, Andrew Grove who have
devised many of the processes for the manufacture of computer chips, which are dependent on chemical
and rate processes. He was one of the three founders of the Intel Corporation and was the CEO for many
years.
 Pharmaceutical: Polymer gels that release a drug over time have been investigated since the 1960s.
The key issues in timed release are the solubility of the drug in the gel, the uniformity of the rate of
release, and, of course, the biocompatibility for any materials placed in the body. One of the leaders in
developing this field was chemical engineer Alan Michaels, who was the President of ALZA Research in
the 1970s, where he developed a variety of drug delivery devices, including one for transdermal delivery
(popularly known as “the patch”).
In 1996, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a controlled release therapy for
glioblastoma multiforme, the most common form of primary brain cancer, developed by chemical
engineer Robert Langer and his colleagues. In this therapy, small polymer wafers containing the
chemotherapy agent are placed directly at the tumour site following surgery.
 Environmental Control: Control of the environment, both through the development of “green”processes
and improved methods of dealing with air and water quality, has long been of interest to chemical
engineers. Chemical engineer John Seinfeld and his colleagues developed the first mathematical models
of air pollution in 1972, and they have remained the leaders in the development of urban and regional
models of atmospheric pollution, especially the processes that form ozone and aerosols. T

1.2 CAREER OPPORTUNITY

Petrochemicals, petroleum and natural gas processing

(upstream and downstream)
Chemicals,
Plastics and polymers
Pulp and paper
Instrumentation and process control

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Energy conversion and utilisation

Environmental control
Biomedical and Biochemical
Food processing
Composite materials, corrosion and protective coatings
Manufacture of microelectronic components
Pharmaceuticals
Agricultural Chemicals Industries

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Introduction to Chemical Engineering

FLOWFLOW SHEETING

Process flow diagram

Introduction
The process flow diagram (PFD) is a critical component of process design. it is the primary method of
detailing the process and design information. Additionally, the most effective way of relaying information
about a process design is the use of process flow diagrams. The PFD shows the sequence of flow
through a system through the various equipment (such as piping, instrumentation, and equipment
design) and details the stream connections, stream flow rates and compositions and operating
conditions through the plant layout.

2.1 Types of Flow Sheet

There are 4 key types of flow sheet and they are shown below in increasing complexity:

Input-Out Diagrams

1. Block Flow Diagrams (BFDs)

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2. Process Flow Diagrams (PFDs)

3. Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs)

Image from Con-struct / CC BY-SA

Input-Output Diagrams

Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you should be able to:

Create input-output diagrams

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Input-Output Diagrams

These diagrams are considered to be the simplest of process flow sheets. In input-output diagrams, the
entire process is represented by 1 block only. They usually only reference the main process streams in and
out of a process.

Example: Ammonia Production Input-output Diagram

Consider an ammonia production process where 3 main streams of raw materials enter the process:

 700 tons/day of methane

 1590 tons/day of water
 1650 tons/day of nitrogen

The process produces 2 main product streams:

 2000 tons/day of ammonia

 1940 tons/day of carbon dioxide

We can put together the following input-output diagram for this process:

Exercise: Benzene Production Input-output Diagram

Consider a process where toluene is fed into a process at 1000 kg/hr and hydrogen is fed at 82 kg/hr. The
following reaction takes place in the process:

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C7H8+H2➡C6H6+CH4�7�8+�2➡�6�6+��4

The reaction achieves 75% conversion and the products of the process are separated into 2 streams. The
first product stream is benzene, exiting at 821 kg/hr. The second product stream is a mixed gas stream
(including the unreacted reactants and by-products) exiting at 261 kg/hr. Draw an input-output diagram
for this process.

Solution

Exercise: Production of Vinyl Chloride

Our client wants to produce 360,000 tonnes/yr (800 million lbs/yr) of vinyl chloride monomer. We decide
to use the following reaction pathway, which contains two reaction steps as follows:
C2H4+Cl2→C2H4Cl2(1)�2�4+��2→�2�4��2(1)
C2H4Cl2→C2H3Cl+HCl(2)�2�4��2→�2�3��+���(2)

We gather the following information on the process:

Name Formula
Molecular Weight
Price
(g/mol)
(USD/tonne)

Ethene C2H4�2�4 28.05 733

Chlorine Cl2��2 70.91 240

Dichloroethane
C2H4Cl2�2�4�� 98.96 300

Hydrogen
HCl��� 36.46 140
Chloride

Vinyl Chloride
C2H3Cl�2�3�� 62.50 750

Assume as well that our production costs are 200USDtonne200�������� of VC produced, and
assume our VC production plant costs 50,000,000USD50,000,000��� to build. Note these values
usually depend on the size of the plant, location, and other factors.

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Create an input-output diagram of the process.

Solution

We know that one of the product streams will be 360,000 tonnes/yr of vinyl chloride. Hydrogen chloride
is produced in a 1:1 molar ratio with vinyl chloride:
VC=360,000tonnes/yr∗tonne−mol62.50tonnes=5,760tonne−molyr��=360,000������/
��∗�����−���62.50������=5,760�����−�����
HCl=5,760tonne−molyr∗36.46tonnestonne−mol=210,000tonnesyr���=5,760�����−����
�∗36.46�����������−���=210,000��������

Similarly for ethane and chlorine, we get:

C2H4=5,760tonne−molyr∗28.05tonnestonne−mol=162,000tonnesyr�2�4=5,760�����−����
�∗28.05�����������−���=162,000��������
Cl2=5,760tonne−molyr∗70.91tonnestonne−mol=408,000tonnesyr��2=5,760�����−�����∗
70.91�����������−���=408,000��������

From this and the information in the table, we get the following input-output diagram:

Previous/next navigation
Previous: Introduction to Flowsheeting

Next: Block Flow Diagrams

Block Flow Diagrams

We typically break down chemical and biological processes (or any other process) into units representing
equipment. These are called unit operations and are drawn as circles or squares:

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Lines with arrows represent the flow of materials in streams to and from units. These lines have only 1
arrowhead:

Materials in each stream are labeled above or beside the stream:

Exercise: BFD Components

What are some errors in the following flowsheet? How would you change the flowsheet to address these
errors?

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Solution

We can correct the BFD to following:

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The second column separates EDC from TCE by operating at a temperature that is lower than TCE’s
boiling temperature, but higher than EDC’s boiling temperature (let’s say, 100∘C100∘�):

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Step 3: For the second column, we separate VC as a liquid and HCl as a gas. We choose a temperature
that is lower than the boiling point temperature of VC, but higher than the boiling point temperature of
HCl. For example, we may choose −50∘−50∘ .Note: this is a very cold working temperature for a
distillation column and we might try to find ways to change this by manipulating pressure, but we will
explore this later in this course and you will learn more through other courses.

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Material Balances

General material balance rules:

 What goes in must come out (or react)

 Total mass into and out of a unit should always be equal
 Molecules or moles may not be conserved, but the atoms should be

We won’t cover material balances in-depth in this course. Instead, I will rely on you applying the
concepts you are learning in your Material and Energy Balances course.

rameters throughout your degree.

Equipment Required Specification

Vessels Height; diameter; pressure; temperature; materials of construction

Flow; driver type; suction and discharge pressures; temperature; shaft power; materials of
Pumps
construction

Height; diameter; orientation; pressure; temperature; number and type of trays; height and type of
Towers
packing; material of construction

Inlet flow; driver type; suction and discharge pressures; temperature; shaft power; material of
Compressors
construction

Heat
Type; area; duty; number of shell and tube passes; operating temperatures; pressures; pressure
Exchangers drops; material of construction

Type; tube pressure; tube temperature; duty; radiant heat transfer area; convective heat transfer
Fired Heaters
area; material of construction

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Exercise: PFD Components

Consider the following diagram:

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