Handbook

The course is intended to prepare students for professional engineering practice at the preliminary design stages of a project. You will become familiar with the steps associated with planning and evaluating a new chemical process and collecting and documenting the information needed to proceed through the design stage. Specific requirements for difference process types, such as food processing, are addressed. This course focuses on four broad areas in the design of chemical process plants:

1. Design Documentation (DD) – prioritising design constraints and objectives, identifying relevant design guidelines and environmental standards, drawing block flow diagrams (BFD), process flow diagrams (PFD), piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&ID) and general arrangement (GA) of equipment in line with industry conventions.
2. Process Simulation (PS) – design, simulating and optimising chemical unit operations using commercial simulation software.
3. Process Safety and Risk (PRS) – identifying, evaluating and managing hazard and safety issues in a chemical plant or process and using control system design and risk analysis tools such as HAZOP, HAZAN and HACCP.
4. Process Economics (PE) – estimating revenue and costs, performing cash flow analysis and using various economic indicators to evaluate engineering projects.

While taught as four distinct modules, they are interrelated aspects of process plant design and are brought together through the design portfolio exercise. Students will demonstrate their competency in all areas through weekly quizzes, the design portfolio and a final exam.