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STUDY GUIDE · GKU 8

Process design and economics study guide (Chemical Engineering)

A process design is finished when two documents agree: a flowsheet that works and a cash-flow table that pays. The first part covers the drawings and the hardware. It explains what a process flow diagram and a piping and instrumentation diagram each show, how instruments are tagged and chosen, how the major items are sized and given a material of construction, and how their cost is estimated from a known price with the six-tenths rule, cost indices and Lang factors. The second part turns a flowsheet into a decision. It covers how a process is synthesised and optimised, why the economic optimum sits where the capital and operating costs balance, which codes and standards govern equipment and materials, and how a project is judged: time value of money, depreciation, net present value, internal rate of return, payback, break-even and benefit–cost ratio.

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Structured by the official ETEC subject standard for this topic: every listed topic and learning outcome, with formulas, figures and worked examples. The full sections are available to members in the app.

SKU 8.1 · Process flow diagrams

  1. Process flow diagrams and P&IDs

    What a block flow diagram, a process flow diagram and a P&ID each show, how a stream table records the mass and energy flows, and how instruments are tagged and selected.

  2. Equipment selection and sizing

    How a unit is chosen for its duty, how vessels, shells and heat exchangers are sized from a hold-up time, a pressure and a duty, and how the material of construction is picked.

  3. Equipment and facilities cost estimation

    How a known equipment price is scaled to a new size with the six-tenths rule, brought to today with a cost index, and turned into a fixed-capital and total-capital estimate with a Lang factor, working capital and offsites.

SKU 8.2 · Process design and economic analyses

  1. Process synthesis and optimisation

    How a flowsheet is built up decision by decision, the heuristics that settle most of those decisions, and how the economic optimum of a design variable is found, including integer choices and constraints.

  2. Design codes and standards

    Which codes and standards govern vessels, piping, tanks, pumps, exchangers, relief, materials, drawings and management systems, and how they are applied when equipment and materials are chosen.

  3. Time value of money and profitability

    Compound interest and discounting, depreciation and after-tax cash flow, and the profitability measures used to judge a plant and to choose between alternatives: ROI, payback, NPV and IRR.

  4. Operating cost, break-even and cost–benefit analysis

    How the cost of manufacture splits into variable and fixed parts, at what production rate a plant stops losing money, and how a benefit–cost ratio judges a modification.

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