Chemical Process Design

Chemical process design requires the selection of a series of processing steps and their integration to form a complete manufacturing system. Once a structure for the process has been established, then a mathematical model of the process can be developed and the process simulated. The type of product, scale of production, and life cycle of the product have major influences on the priorities in chemical process design. Short life cycles require the design of multiproduct processes. Chemical processes should be designed to maximize the sustainability of industrial activity. For chemical processing, this means that processes should use raw materials, energy, and water as efficiently as is economic and practicable, both to prevent the production of waste that can be environmentally harmful and to preserve the sources of raw materials, energy, and water as much as possible. All aspects of chemical processing must feature good health and safety practice. The design might be a new design or the retrofit of an existing process. If the design is a retrofit, then one of the objectives should be to maximize the use of existing equipment, even if it is not ideally suited to its new purpose. Both continuous and batch process operation can be used. Different approaches to chemical process design can be adopted.