Chemical Engineering October 2021 - 56

CPI 2021 Special Advertising Section
One Team Delivers Multiple Solutions for Equipment
Replacement Emergency
A
chemical plant in
Texas with a damaged
thermal oxidizer
benefitted from using
Koch Engineered
Solutions' (KES) onesource
offering of replacement
equipment
and installation services.
The chemical plant
experienced minimized
downtime, easier communication,
and an
overall more efficient
replacement process by
working with KES compared
to other market
alternatives. These benefits
greatly aided in reducing
overall downtime, resulting in an estimated savings of over
one million dollars each day for the customer.
Koch Engineered Solutions provided a new Thermal Oxidizer
combustion chamber, refractory material, and all necessary planning,
services, and installation to replace the damaged equipment
safely and properly. The new equipment was fully installed and
operational within only two weeks of KES receiving the purchase
order - a timeframe which the client believed was impossible to
achieve based on their
previous experiences
working through other
suppliers.
Selecting equipment
from the John
Zink and Koch Knight
product lines, along
with using planning
and installation services
from Koch Specialty
Plant Services, Koch
Engineered Solutions
was able to provide
a cohesive replacement
and installation
solution to the chemical
plant as one unified
team. This gave
the chemical plant one KES point of contact and only one purchase
order for the entire project, as KES took on the task of expertly and
efficiently coordinating multiple teams, timelines, and deliverables.
Overall, Koch Engineered Solutions was able to use its team of
experts to provide reliable, safe, efficient, and quick solutions to
the chemical plant's pressing needs. In this industry, time is always
money, and KES seeks to help its partners make the most of both.
koch.link/aboutKES
Optimizing Value of Process Simulation
W
hy is it common to wait for a problem that is big and encompasses
an entire process before engaging process simulation
tools? The power of a simulator to help solve day-to-day
challenges is often overlooked. With the speed of computing
reaching new highs in even basic laptops, problems like optimizations
are easier than ever to setup and get accurate answers
quickly.
Take the example of an existing distillation column operating
smoothly, but new regulations require minimization of an existing
overhead component. Given that the degrees of freedom
are more limited than in a " brand new " design, ex. the number
of stages is fixed, the amount of condensing and reboiling are
bounded, and the feed locations cost real money to move; the
analysis needs to include the ability to set constraints around
these variables.
Users of simulation software often run sensitivity or parametric
analysis in systems like this because they are straightforward
to set up. However, to capture all the potential degrees of freedom,
a very large number of analyses must be run, and the results
can be difficult to interpret as soon as there are more than
three independent variables being studied. The optimizers in
simulation software provide the flexibility to define an objective,
in this case minimization of a flow rate or concentration, while
also applying known constraints.
Defining as many independent variables as necessary no longer
leads to interpretation problems created by simpler parametric
analysis. The simulator will find the optimum.
Where CHEMCAD NXT leaps ahead is four fold. One: Ease of
set up. An existing simulation is ready to be optimized at any time!
Engineers can specify something as simple as a single flowsheet
56
variable for the
objective, they
can set up a
more complicated
math function,
or they
can build out a
complex objective
in a programmatic
style.
Two: Power
and Speed.
CHEMCAD NXT
will use every
available CPU
core on a machine
to deliver
answers fast,
whether there
are hundreds
or tens of thousands
of iterations required. Three: Accuracy. CHEMCAD NXT's optimizer
is specifically designed to seek out global optimums, even
in systems with multiple local minimums. Four: Reusability. Once
an optimization is built, it is easy to modify, whether to change an
objective or reflect changes in the actual facility.
Improve or troubleshoot existing plant performance today.
Even single unit operation optimizations could yield big results
with very little setup and execution.
www. chemstations.com/CE1
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
OCTOBER 2021
https://www.koch.link/aboutKES http://www.chemstations.com/CE1 http://WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
Chemical Engineering October 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering October 2021
