Chemical Engineering January 2015 - 17

Newsfront
" Because we have a well established
system of suppliers, and the
process of parallel tasking and detailing
allows for a very high level
of efficiency during design and construction,
the modular project is
quite short, " explains Loftus.
He says a typical schedule, depending
upon materials, level of
complexity, customer specifications
and number of modules being made,
ranges from 9 to 12 months when
starting at the process-design stage.
The time to erect modular facilities
is usually reduced as well.
" After the modules arrive in the
field, a single module might be
erected within a month, with the
average multi-module system taking
two to three months. Once the
modules are erected, the customer
would be ready to commission a
water startup, followed by chemical
introduction, " says Loftus.
Ken Reynaud, senior vice president
with Plant Process Equipment,
a subsidiary of Plant Process Group
(League City, Tex.; www.plantprocess.com/refining),
agrees. " Our
modular refineries arrive at the site
like an erector set. The foundation
is already poured, the trucks roll
up, a crane lifts the modules off the
truck, and everything is efficiently
set up and ready to go. The time it
takes to erect a modular refinery is
dramatically less than to stick-build
the same size facility. "
In addition to shortened schedules,
fabricators say the quality of
modular systems is often higher
than conventionally built systems.
" Because we are building in a controlled
environment we have workers
at designated stations, and those
workers are highly
skilled welders, fitters
[and so on], " says
Reynaud. " If you work
onsite, you don't know
the skill level of the
workers. If the welders
aren't capable, the
welds fail, and so on.
But building under
controlled circumstances
affords the
ability to control the
quality of the workers
and, therefore, the
quality of the work. "
Spindler adds that
factory fabrication
also allows the use of stringent
quality systems and factory testing
to ensure that finished systems
conform to technical requirements.
" Eighty percent of the commissioning
and startup is already complete
on a system before it's even shipped
to the site, " he says.
Finally, there are also cost efficiencies.
" Because our design is
very precise and we are working
within the known space of a welldefined
structural frame, and because
we detail every isometric, we
have a fully detailed bill of materials,
upon which our assembly shop
can rely, " explains Loftus. " So, when
they place the order for materials,
our shop doesn't order excess, which
assists with cost efficiency. In traditional
stick-build, extra materials
are always ordered for contingency
planning, which drives up costs. "
" Our clients make money by makSource:
GEA Filtration
FIGURE 3. Crossflow filtration, microfiltration, nanofiltration,
ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis plants can all
be placed on modular skids
tion or creating downtime, which
results in lost production dollars, "
he emphasizes.
ing a product, not by having us
building a plant in the middle of
their floor, " says Bruce Blanchard,
national sales manager
with GEA Filtration
(Columbia,
Md.; www.geafiltration.com),
which
provides modular
filtration
skids.
Source: Wunderlich-Malec
FIGURE 2. These complete, modular integrated water
solutions are pre-assembled and factory tested to meet the
client's functional requirements
" Not only is modular
faster because
of the controlled
environment, but
it's less expensive
because we aren't
disrupting producMore
and more modular
Because of the associated benefits,
more operations and processes are
being offered in modular form to
meet a myriad of process needs.
Here's a summary of some of the
modular systems currently available
to processors.
Process systems. A diverse variety
of process systems can be provided in
modules from filtration skids to water
purification to mass-transfer systems.
Membrane filtration. Crossflow
filtration, microfiltration, nanofiltration,
ultrafiltration and reverseosmosis
plants can all be placed on
modular skids by GEA Filtration.
And, there has been an increased
need for these molecular-level separation
plants due to a lot of activity
in the nutritionals market, says
Blanchard. " The basic technology
allows for converting a mixed nutritional
stream into a very specific
nutritional stream, " he says. " For
example, if you take a nutritional
product that has fats, proteins and
carbohydrates, it can be segmented
so it has more proteins and less carbohydrates,
which falls into creating
healthier nutritional products
by manipulating food chemistry. "
What is the reason for doing this
modularly? " The standardized approach
to a modular format of these
filtration plants results in a more
compact plant that takes up less floor
ChemiCal engineering www.Chemengonline.Com January 2015 17
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Chemical Engineering January 2015

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