Approaching the Revamp
SUMMARY
The process design approach to new plant building can be costly if applied to a revamp, but an alternative is to integrate the heat and material balance and the equipment evaluation into the process flow sheet modeling.
TEXT
Designing a grass-roots unit requires establishing the unit heat and material balance and then sizing the various equipment items. Basic process design and the subsequent equipment specification are generally done by separate groups of people. Revamping an existing unit can be done in the same way, but the cost of the revamp will generally be much higher because linkage between equipment systems is not truly appreciated.
Revamping any process unit at minimum capital cost requires a different approach. The person or group of people establishing the conceptual unit design must have a working knowledge of the specific unit, all of the major equipment, and the specific unit bottlenecks. They need not be specialists on the individual pieces of equipment, but must have a working knowledge of all major equipment and understand how one equipmnent system affects another…
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