ISBN 978-3-8439-4958-3

978-3-8439-4958-3, Reihe Technische Chemie

Heiko Radatz
Off-the-rack instead of Tailor-made Module-based Plant Design at Equipment Level

202 Seiten, Dissertation Technische Universität Dortmund (2021), Softcover, A5

Zusammenfassung / Abstract

Module-based plant design facilitates a paradigm shift in chemical and biochemical industry to decrease the time needed for plant design. Instead of a tailored design of apparatuses for a target production rate, modules are selected off-the-rack to set up a production plant.

Within the scope of this thesis, four important areas of module-based plant design at equipment level are investigated. First, the determination of a plants’ overall operating window, a prerequisite for equipment module selection and evaluation is improved by considering the so far neglected non-linear dependency between the operating constraints and the production rate of a plant.

Second, the currently accepted view that investment costs are determining the decision on the use of equipment modules for different process units is disproved and novel preselection approaches are proposed, applied and evaluated. A preselection approach based on investment and operating costs is rated most suitable to decide on the use of equipment modules for a case study. The third area explored is equipment module selection for a constant market demand, aiming at flexibility in production rate at low investment costs, as well as for a market demand development. It is shown by case studies that modular production plants offer a promising alternative to conventionally designed plants. Finally, an approach to design equipment modules for flexibility in production rate is introduced and applied. For the case study of a heat exchanger it is shown that a four times larger operating window can be obtained at only 14 % higher total annual costs compared to a conventionally designed heat exchanger.

Hence, this work investigates four key areas in module-based plant design at equipment level beyond current state of the art contributing to a paradigm shift in plant design.