DTCE - Design Tools for Chemical Engineers
Books show, spreadsheets show & do

Home
Drawings

ProcDev - Process Development

Download ProcDev.zip (174 kB) - A database file with material balances and process flow charts and descriptions of  common "canned" processes. Imagine having all the common chemical plant PFDs on your PDA for quick reference! Well here is a start.

Features

For the first time in chemical engineering publication, here is a generalized material balance on a spreadsheet.

For example, to use the generalized material balance spreadsheet to design a simple formaldehyde plant as shown (drawing using the "flow-sheet drawing" module of course) below:-

open up the ProcDev module to show the following view:-

Type in "balance and press "enter". You should see the material balance record. Now tap on the spreadsheet icon and copy it to the clipboard with Ctrl-C. You should view the following:-

Next, paste the spreadsheet into your project files as below:-

Open the spreadsheet and enter data into the "Feed table" below:-

Up to 8 components and 3 feed streams may be entered, along with their formula, name, molecular weight, mole fractions and total molar flow-rates. The feed steams must be given names to be included in the material balance.

Next enter data into the Equipment Specification Table, as below:-

This table can take up to a total of 7 unit operations, of 4 types reactors, adders, separators and distillation columns. As many as 4 parameters must be entered for the distillation unit, and up to 8 (dependent on the number of components) coefficients characterizing the equipment.

Having done that, enter the connections between the flow streams and the equipment. Up to 3 feed streams per equipment (numbered 1, 2 & 3) and 2 output streams (numbered 6 & 7 for top and bottom respectively) for the separator and distillation units only, as below:-

Now recalculate using by selecting the entire spreadsheet and copying and pasting it into itself, or use the "macro" provided. (The Psion spreadsheet algorithm is unable to cope):-

Then pan to the bottom of the spreadsheet for your stream flows:-

Last updated 2001-09-15 - Created using FrontPage by Jeff Harmed All copyrights © reserved