After a little downtime we are back! I have added a new category, Cost Estimation, to our store of suggested books. The collection of books by John Page, also called “Page and Nation” by some, are a great way to get manhour requirements for installing piping, HVAC systems, cable trays, and other items.
With the growing opportunities in Latin America, I’ve found myself having to deal with the occasional document in Spanish, despite never having taken so much as a high school class in Español. (I ended up with another language instead.) In some cases I’ve had to sift through getting everything in Spanish: the process description, P&IDs, you name it. Of course “you’ll need to start learning the process before we’ve hired the translator.” How to cope with a language you’ve never studied?
Here are some tools and tricks for steps 2 and 3: Continue reading
I get a lot of work-related magazines across my desk, and definitely have my preferences in what I find useful as a process engineer & consultant. I thought I would share my narrow, heavily biased opinions, because maybe it will help some of you make the right choices for yourself.
My magazine goals
I usually read work magazines hoping to get one of three things, in this order:
Industry news, trends in chemical prices, information about stock prices and legal issues, and overview case studies tend to be less useful to me. Remember that at the moment I’m a chemical engineering consultant; your needs as a reader will vary a bit from mine.
I’ve also learned that trying to force yourself to read a random article you totally don’t understand, in the hopes of “remembering it later,” is usually a fool’s errand. Better to track down such information later if and when you ever need it. Instead, you want to find articles that are on the edge of what you do know: you’re pushing yourself to learn but you can understand what’s going on.
With that said, let’s crack open some magazines and take a look!
Chemical Engineering Magazine
Requires subscription (but see the end of this post…)
This magazine is quite tailored to my needs, and if I had to choose just one magazine for work I guess Chemical Engineering would win. I find an average of a bit less than one article worth saving per issue – sometimes nothing, but sometimes two or even three go in “the vault.” That’s a very good rate of stories that I’m glad to have come across.
They also have reasonable and well-balanced editorials from multiple perspectives, which seems to be rare in an industry magazine. Most magazines cheerlead their audience like an official school newspaper but Chemical Engineering has a good range of perspectives.
Hydrocarbon Processing
http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/
Requires subscription (but see the end of this post…)
This is one of my favourites as well. They cover the lifecycle of hydrocarbons and discuss more sides than just chemical engineering. This is actually a bit of a problem for me, because the hit ratio of useful articles is a bit less than CE magazine. Some topics are totally removed from my responsibility. But I have a nice folder of great finds from HP as well, especially on relief valve analysis.
They also have a big focus on reliability and good maintenance practices. If you’re into that kind of thing Hydrocarbon Processing is the best source in this list. Continue reading
Last year my work took my to a small group specialized in engineering support for sulfuric acid plants, mainly those helping the mining industry have plants on hand for processing ore. You know H2So4, right?
![Copper mining and sulfuric acid plant, Copperhill], Tenn.](https://i0.wp.com/farm3.staticflickr.com/2166/2178264447_9dc4fe008d.jpg?resize=500%2C352 "Acid plant in a Copper Mine (1939)")
Acid plant in a Copper Mine (1939)
Sitting in the office of one of most the senior guys there, who I definitely respect, a huge yet well-worn and sticky-tabbed book caught my eye. It was the Handbook of Sulphuric Acid Manufacturing, Second Edition, by Douglas K. Louie, P.Eng. You can read about it here. The book covers everything from simulations to maintenance, written by a man who’s been doing it his entire professional life. This was a go-to resource for even the top people in the office, and a great learning resource for the younger engineers.
Asking about the book also lead me to a favorite haunt of the office, sulphuric-acid.com. Part technical manual, part suppliers resource, part repository of standards and maintenance tips, it’s a great site. You might even want to check out their brief articles on utilities like cooling towers and instrument air, even if you don’t care about this industry.
Bonus: Sulphur or sulfur? Many formal groups like the IUPAC have ruled that “sulfur” is officially correct, yet you’ll still see the “ph” spelling quite often. If in doubt I’d pick “sulfur,” but if a plant or company is already using “ph” you’re not going to be able to change it.
An important part of using Apsen Basic Engineering (Zyqad) is having properly set up equipment and instrumentation datasheets, that can read key information from your project database and drop it into a customized datasheet that your clients and customers can understand. This isn’t usually a problem. Most datasheets are easily standardized forms, where a certain number of known, predictable fields are required to describe each type of equipment. “For a pump I need max and normal flowrates, design temperature, normal temperature, etc. etc… 20 fields in all. Let’s code it up!”
But a problem can come up when a datasheet has an unknown number of elements, and each element needs its own descriptors. For example, consider a distillation column that tries to separate fluids by passing them over many trays. It’s typical to provide a vendor with a column datasheet detailing the outer shell, and also a tray datasheet detailing the predicted conditions (temperature, pressure, vapor and liquid flowrates, viscosities, densities, molecular weights, etc.) on each and every tray within the tower, as well as the for condensers and reboilers. The problem is: how many trays will you have? The number varies all the time, and it’s possible a design office could be dealing with 10 trays, 40 trays, or anything in between. What to do? In particular, what do we do when there are so many trays you can’t always fit them all on a single page?
The following solution from Aspentech can help: it describes how to set up an “overspill,” so that a replicating unit (in this case, a row of tray data) can repeat itself onto multiple pages where necessary.
Read Example of Tray Datasheet which can overspill (Aspen Basic Engineering V7.2).
Note: You will need an Aspentech Support account. If your office uses Aspen Basic Engineering then you can probably get an account for free.
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