Process control

Process Engineering Equipment 

If you picked up this book you are probably one of those lucky people who run plants.
Either a thinly spread engineer (branch of specialty is irrelevant), a newly promoted
technical manager, or a harassed technologist or senior mechanic, who just was told:
“See that plant out there? You’re in charge of making it work!” Even if you’ve been
in plants for years, that’s enough to make your innards rumble. If you have just
stepped out of school, into your first plant, or into a totally different plant from the
previous one you were at, your reaction might be more severe, especially if you
belong to one of the numerous organizations with no budget for rotating machinery
specialists (who look after what moves a process through its paces) or
environmental specialists (who make certain you don’t get fined or jailed, good
intentions notwithstanding, as you run your plant). At this point, I should explain
where I fit in with your agenda.
Twenty-some years ago, some heated arguments on the subject of how much I
wanted to be a rotating machinery specialist took place in Canada’s wild and woolly
north. I was fencing with my boss, a process engineer, who was recommending I
join his field. It was what my company needed, he asserted. I thought it needed
both of us doing what we loved best. My career bears witness to the fact that I won
the match, in the short- and long-term.
Time since has brought a few things forcibly home to me. To start with, the more
I dealt with plant machinery in any form, the more I accepted that process
conditions could affect the performance of that machinery at least as much as actual
mechanical characteristics. In operations, repair and overhaul, or retrofit design
and reengineering, what keeps people like me a step ahead of the manufacturer’s
field service representatives is knowledge of the process and familiarity with the
controls that govern the entire system. In turn, the process engineer who gets
handed a plant to run must acquire some basic knowledge of my bread and butter,
the machinery that makes everything move up, down, or around. In large facilities,
such as the ones I was fortunate enough to spend time in, there generally are in-
house rotating machinery specialists. Often, though, the process engineer is not
that lucky and gets everything—process components, machinery, controls, and all.
Life handed me an education (after formal degree acquisition) in rotating
machinery specialization and the environmental technology that goes with it (yes,
we machinery “cranks” run the stuff that turns out arguably 80 percent of the gunk
in the universe). While doing this, I worked with scores of process engineers, control
engineers, and various other specialists on a variety of projects that were among
the most high profile in the world in their own right. It was “arranging to be in the
right place—an operating plant—to get the best education in the best school in the
world.”
After all, curriculum, undergraduate or otherwise, is not necessarily any comfort.
In my day they rarely taught this stuff to process, chemical, or mechanical engineers
xiat universities. They still don’t. That leaves all the young engineers in the same
boat—without any practical guide for reference.
My editor at McGraw-Hill was keen that they should have one, and one that was
easy to read. We soon found we were on the same page on the subject of readability.
We do not like technical material that sounds more intellectual than it absolutely
has to, and we do like many diagrams, photographs, tables, and figures.
I add two other ingredients to my books and courses: (1) information on items
(such as condition monitoring and specialized controls) that will help the engineer
optimize cost-effective operations and (2) information that will help the engineer
stay out of trouble with legislators, particularly environmental legislators
(regardless of whether the legislation is current or impending). Fines levied for
ignoring emissions or pollutant statutes may not be high enough to be a deterrent
in themselves when weighed against a process plant’s gross production revenue.
They can, however, whittle away at profits while adding to overall costs per
operating hour. Frequently, though, environmental equipment can actually result
in machinery’s attaining longer times between overhauls. Also, the loss of goodwill
—that priceless commodity on annual reports—is immense if environmental
standards are not followed.
In this competitive age, plants do vie for national, state, or provincial quality
control awards. Clever managers can turn those into longer customer lists.
Attaining these awards is not something that many accountants, lawyers, and
MBAs, who run major corporations but may have little or no technical exposure,
can pull off without their engineers. It is the engineers who are likely to be the key
figures in putting together the action framework for what will buy their firm new
or continued goodwill. Environmental accounting plans, holistic management of
resources and waste products, environmental policy, waste and toxic management—
they mean pretty much the same thing and they are not a feature at all in many
other process engineers’reference books.
It is painfully evident that the emphasis given to waste and toxic management
varies globally. It reaches a high in Sweden and Norway, England is fast developing
an aggressive proactivity in this vein, and Canada has excellent technology, which
may or may not get enforced to the appropriate extent depending on the political
balance of power at any time. The United States has some large loopholes that are
surprising for a country so advanced; shared emissions legislation is one. And yet,
it’s in the area of waste and toxic management that companies receive the most
vocal and widespread media coverage (and loss of business) when exposed. Some of
the world’s youth appear to have a sense of resources running low and therefore a
need to conserve them. In these days of increasing international joint ventures, the
gaps between all these preferences is fast diminishing and the stable point for the
resultant system can tend to reflect the highest standards among the partners.
One could argue that subjects that infringe on environmental and waste
management turf belong in another handbook and with another kind of engineer.
That is not entirely true though this is becoming a specialist field. The reasons for
this statement are rooted in profit margins. If environmental considerations and
waste products can be integrated into production in a way that what might have
been a hazard or waste now contributes to revenue, this is obviously preferable
to that hazard or waste being isolated with its own disposal/neutralization system
that does not contribute revenue. Some examples are biomass waste in pulp and
paper production, formerly disposed of, that can be converted to gaseous fuel for a
turbine (see Pulp and Paper) and chemical by-products in complex downstream
petrochemical plastics production, otherwise waste, that can now also be used as
turbine fuel. The controls and system modifications that assist incorporation of
these profitable adaptions into process plants are given some space.
xiiPrefaceI have also included some basic information on specific controls and monitoring
systems. They are a fact of life on a process engineer’s turf; the ones I have
highlighted have a proven track record for adding profit margins to processes by
minimizing downtime or fluctuations.
Similarly, a process engineer may have to make decisions related to
turbomachinery performance or capacity that are affected by metallurgical
processes. Included is some information on common critical alloys used in today’s
plants.
This book contains information on the major components and basic systems,
including instrumentation and controls, and some optimization techniques that I
wish I had had when I landed, albeit happily, in my first major plant. It also contains
examples, drawn from knowledgeable sources, of action plans that have kept
various process companies in good standing and high esteem with their public and
governments worldwide. Selected extracts of the technology that are the bases of
these policies are also included. These examples and technology extracts are
frequently missing from engineering handbooks; I would be doing users of this
handbook a disservice to leave out this information.
Increasingly process plants are becoming small power producers. Governments
are now beginning to offer incentives to small power producers. The Thai
government, which buys the excess power from Esso’s Sriracha refinery, is just one
such example. The Alberta, Canada, government buys excess power from Syncrude
Canada Limited, which produces 170,000 barrels of crude oil a day. The British
power network buys excess power from Elf Acquitaine’s Flotta terminal, which
collects North Sea petroleum products.
In other words, this book aims to provide a process engineer with:
Knowledge of the basics the process engineer will meet up with
Enough knowledge to help the process engineer optimize operation safety,
efficiency, and profit margins
Information about environmental systems and avoiding trouble with the law
Tools to integrate the plant’s operation with other services, such as power
production and waste management, to further optimize profits and minimize
losses due to interruptions in services provided by external companies
Claire Soares

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IP_Industrial Process Measurement


Industrial Process Measurement in Edison, NJ is a private company categorized under Scientific and Engineering Equipment and Supplies. Our records show it was established in 1995 and incorporated in New Jersey



The objectives of the manual are for you to be able to:

• ƒ  Specify and design instrumentation systems. 
• ƒ  Correctly select and size control valves for industrial use. 
• ƒ  Understand the problems with installing measurement equipment. 
• ƒ  Troubleshoot instrumentation systems and control valves. 
• ƒ  Isolate and rectify instrumentation faults. 
• ƒ  Understand most of the major technologies used for instrumentation and control valves. 

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The Measurement, Instrumentation and Sensors 



Features


Describes current uses of instruments and techniques for practical measurement
Includes detailed mathematical treatment to discover applications and solve problems
Provides appendixes to conversion factors (English to SI andSI prefixes)

Summary


The Measurement Instrumentation and Sensors Handbook describes the use of instruments and techniques for practical measurements required in engineering, physics, chemistry, and the life sciences.

The book examines:

• Sensors
• Hardware
• Software
• Techniques
• Information processing systems
• Automatic data acquisition
• Reduction and analysis as well as their incorporation for control purposes Organized according to the measurement problem, each section addresses the different ways of making a measurement for a given variable. Chapters present information on three levels :
• Basic information without equations and a description of the subject that can be understood by the newcomer
• Detailed text and mathematical treatment essential for discovering applications and solving problems outside one's field of specialty
• Advanced applications of the subject, evaluative opinions, and areas for future study

The Measurement, Instrumentation and Sensors Handbook provides a graded level of difficulty from start to finish, serving the reference needs of the broadest group of readers. Edited by one of the more noted instrumentation experts in the world, the book contains nearly 150 contributions, covering all aspects on the design and implementation of various instrumentation.

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Practical Process Control for Engineers and Technicians 




Experience shows that most graduate engineers have a sound knowledge of
the mathematical aspects of process control.  Nevertheless, when it comes to
the practical understanding of industrial process control, there is often a
problem in converting this theoretical knowledge into a practical
understanding of control concepts and problems.  

This publication, with its simulation software and associated training
workshop, is intended to fill this gap.



Although the mathematical side is kept to a minimum, a basic
understanding of engineering concepts and a general understanding of
algebra and calculus is required in order to obtain a full understanding of
this publication

Together with this documentation, software for realistic process simulation
and control is provided to allow for extensive practical exercises.  These
realistic process simulations provide a tool necessary to gain greater
practical and theoretical knowledge and a clearer
perception into control concepts.



Practical experience and confidence can be achieved if full use is made of
this software. The principals of industrial process control concepts and the
associated pitfalls are explained in an easy to understand manner.  

For example, perfect control of a valve (according to process control theory)
could result in excessive valve movement.  This however would most likely
result in frequent valve failure with associated production losses.



The first general theory of automatic control, written by Nyquist, only
appeared in 1932.

Today, automatic control is an increasingly important part of the capital
outlay in industry.  The primary difficulty encountered with process control
is in applying well-defined mathematical theories to day-to-day industrial
applications, and translating ideal models to the frequently far from ideal
real-world scenario.  
 
Process control has a number of significant advantages.  As always, the
primary factor in any operation is cost.  The use of process control in a
system enables the maximum profitability to be derived.  Other advantages
are that automatic control results in increased plant flexibility, reduced
maintenance, and in stable and safe operation of the plant.  

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