Chemical process design is about finding a sustainable process that can convert the raw materials to the desired products cost effectively. Chemical engineers support diverse range of sectors and process industries, which convert raw materials to more than 70,000 products. Given this diverse set of industries and sectors with its own domain specific equipment and standards, in this course, the objective is to introduce students to systematic methods for process design, to give overview of the main steps involved in typical life cycle of a process design, as well as the complexity of the design activity. In addition to systematic approach for process design, we stress the importance of iterative process analysis including economics, uncertainty & sensitivity analysis of design assumptions and basis, heat integration, optimization as well as sustainability analysis of process design. In this way, the course aims to equip students with a flexible skillset to help design innovative, cost-competitive and sustainable processes in diverse range of processing industries. En studerende, der fuldt ud har opfyldt kursets mål, vil kunne:

• Apply a systematic approach for process design
• Identify, gather and analyze necessary data, methods and models for design
• Make design related decisions
• Generate and evaluate/screen alternatives for design
• Use computer aided tools & work in groups
• Verify and analyze simulation results
• Perform process economics analysis including uncertainty analysis
• Perform heat integration and design via pinch analysis
• Apply nonlinear programming for process optimization
• Perform life cycle analysis (LCA) to assess environmental aspects of sustainable process design
• Use knowledge to solve practical engineering problems
• Apply chemical engineering principles learned from other courses

The systematic framework for process design consists of the following tasks, which is applied to a selected process design case study:
Task 1: Collect information on the product
Task 2: Collect information on the process; alternative paths to convert other raw materials to the desired product
Task 3: Generate and/or select preliminary process flowsheet.
Task 4: Perform mass balance. Decide process conditions (such as reaction conversion, separation factor, purge, etc.) and model each unit using simple models and perform mass balance.
Task 5: Perform energy balance: (i) Set temperatures and pressures on the process flowsheet/streams (based on heuristics or information/analysis in previous tasks). (ii) With T and P set for each stream, perform a simple mass & energy balance using the same (using the simulator).
Task 6: Refine and consolidate mass and energy balances: (i) convert each of the simple models with the more rigorous counterpart, one at a time, until all simple models have been converted.
Task 7: Estimate cost of the project including capital and production cost: based on the simulation results from task 6. This task needs appropriate equipment sizing for costing calculations.
Task 8: Perform an economic evaluation using various profitability metrics based on capital and production cost estimates in task 7 given for the “base case” design
Task 9: Perform heat integration and explore opportunities for heat and mass integration (recycle). If yes, apply them & reassess potential economic improvement (redo task 9) against base case.
Task 10: Process/flowsheet optimization: formulate relevant optimization problem and seek if potential economic improvement exist by optimized unit operation or flowsheet operation. Reassess potential economic improvement with the optimized solution (redo task 8).
Task 11: Perform sustainability analysis of the base case design and explore opportunities to improve environmental footprint (e.g. CO2 footprint, ODP, AP, etc) of the base case design (e.g. consider changing a solvent, using alternative unit operations, etc). Reassess the potential improvement by doing simulations and redoing task 8.

The final outcome combining the results of all tasks are compiled in a design project report to be presented in the final project report. Textbook: "Systematic Methods of Chemical Process Design", L.T. Biegler, I.E. Grossmann, A.W. Westerberg, Prentice-Hall, 1997, ISBN: 0-13-492422-3

supporting texbook (especially for cost and economic evaluation)
Plant Design and Economics for Chemical Engineers 5th Edition by Max Peters,‎ Klaus Timmerhaus,‎ Ronald West,‎ Max Peters. 29. april, 2022