Discipline
Process
What the plant is actually for. Unit operations, refinery and petrochemical routes, pharma manufacturing, and the documents every other discipline works from.
- Topics
- 8
- Standards covered
- 15
Beginner
No prior knowledge assumed
What the plant actually does — the shape of a process
Every plant is built from the same short list of unit operations. How a refinery, a petrochemical complex and a pharmaceutical plant differ, and why the process engineer's decisions land on everyone else's desk.
Distillation columns — reflux, reboil and the operating window
Why one boiling stage is never enough, what reflux actually buys you, how trays and packing do the same job differently, and why a column has a narrow range it will work in.
Reading a PFD and the material balance — where every number starts
What a process flow diagram carries that a P&ID does not, how to read a stream table, why mass in equals mass out is the most useful check on a plant, and how design cases become equipment sizes.
Inspection and quality control — ITPs, hold points and NCRs
How work gets inspected and accepted on an EPC project. What an inspection and test plan is, the difference between a hold point and a witness point, what a non-conformance report does, and why the disposition is an engineering decision rather than an inspector's.
Intermediate
Builds on the basics
Relief and flare systems — what happens when pressure wins
How relief scenarios are worked out, why the governing case is rarely the obvious one, and why nearly every part of a flare exists to stop it becoming the hazard it was built to remove.
Fired heaters — an open flame next to a hydrocarbon inventory
How a furnace is arranged, why the process fluid and flue gas travel in opposite directions, what draught and excess air actually control, and why the purge before light-off is never negotiable.
Heat integration — why the plant reuses its own heat, and what that costs
Feed-effluent exchangers, the temperature approach trade-off, why steam comes at several pressures, and why a well-integrated plant is cheap to run and hard to start.
Water and effluent — the largest flow on the plant, and none of it is product
Why boiler feed water needs to be purer than anything else on site, what cooling tower chemistry is actually managing, and why effluent problems announce themselves months late.