CH4801 Final Year Design Project (FYDP)

Semester 2, AY 2014-2015

General information
Instructors:

Assoc Prof Kunn Hadinoto Ong

Assoc Prof Lau Wai Man Raymond
Dr Mukta Bansal
Dr Suraj Vasudevan (course coordinator)

Lecture hours:

Tues
Wed

Tutorials hours:

CBE and BIE computer labs have been reserved for FYDP students six
hours/week. The instructors will not be present during these hours.

9:30-11:30 (CBE-LT)
11:30-12:30 (CBE-LT)

Mon 9:30-11:30
Thurs 9:30-11:30
Fri
11:30-13:30
Consultation hours:

By email appointments only. Please indicate your group number in the email.

Project Overview
The goal of the project is to design a plant to produce ethyl benzene - an important chemical that is
used almost exclusively as feedstock in the production of styrene monomer via dehydrogenation.
Please refer to the enclosed problem statement for the details (e.g., product specifications, production
capacity, reaction kinetics, raw material costs, etc.). The project is divided into 3 phases.
Phase 1 (Weeks 1-4): You are first required to come up with the steady-state simulation of the
preliminary design given in the problem statement. Subsequently, you would need to redesign the
plant to meet the specified process constraints.
Phase 2 (Weeks 5-8): You are tasked to develop a steady-state economically optimal design before
heat integration. The economically optimal design is defined as the design having the minimum annual
cost (i.e., total manufacturing cost + annualized capital cost). You can neglect the time value of money
in this analysis.
Phase 3 (Weeks 9-11): You are required to incorporate heat integration to improve the energy
efficiency of the plant. No further optimization is required in this phase.

Task components
Process design and simulation: You are to carry out conceptual design of the process and construct a
working HYSYS simulation model.
Process economics: A thorough economic analysis, which requires sizing of the equipment, must be
carried out to justify your recommended optimal PFD. For the equipment, capital cost correlation data
are given in the problem statement.
Safety, health and environmental (SHE): In the final report, hazard identification and HAZOP studies
for a selected unit operation (either one of the reactors or one of the distillation columns) are to be
presented. Detailed mechanical drawing of the chosen unit operation is required. Other topics such as
plant layout, operational safety, treatment and disposal of effluent may also be discussed.
Assessment
You will work in groups of 8 (plus/minus 1 is acceptable). Every member of the group should
contribute equally towards each task.
Note: FYDP Semester 2 constitutes 60% of the total FYDP marks.
Assessment

Date

Weightage

Individual Quiz

Mid semester

15%

th

Final Report

20 April 2015

30%

Group Oral Presentation

End semester

15%

Guidelines for Final Report

1. Page limit: 30 (all inclusive cover-to-cover including Appendix) + 2 folded A3 sheets for PFD and
equipment design drawing. Details of equipment sizing (e.g., reactor, separator, heat exchanger)
are to be included in the Appendix.
2. Formatting: The reports must be typed in Times New Roman font size 10 with line spacing of 1.5.
3. Suggested organization: The report may be arranged in the following order - Title page, Table of
Contents, Executive Summary, List of Tables, List of Figures, Main report, Bibliography, Appendices.
4. CD-ROM: PDF copy of the report and HYSYS files (files will be tested for robustness).
Guidelines for Report Writing
1. Executive summary: The final report should contain an executive summary, not exceeding one
page.
2. Tables, Figures and Equations: All tables and figures should be appropriately numbered and used
for cross referencing. Please provide Table of Contents, List of Figures, and List of Tables.
3. References: Appropriate references (i.e., technical report, textbooks, scientific journals) should be
used (websites, Wikipedia are not acceptable references). A consolidated bibliography should be
provided at the end of the report.
4. Significant figures: Note that only two digits are required after the decimal point. Anything longer

should be written in the scientific notation. Example: 1.6324 should be written as 1.63 and 0.00123
should be written as 1.2310-3. Note that the notation 1.23E-3 is NOT correct.
5. Units: Please use SI units throughout the report. If some correlations are provided in non-SI units
specify the original unit and the value in SI units within brackets, e.g., 10ft (3.05m).
6. Figures: All figures should be legible; axes should be named and appropriate units should be
specified.
7. Demonstration of working: There is no need to show extensive demonstration of how a value is
obtained. Just indicate where the values of the constituent variables have been obtained, either
from a table, previous equation, reference, etc., and display the value.
Useful References
1. Seader, W.D., Seader, J.D., and Lewin, D.R., Process Design Principles, John Wiley, 2004.
2. Turton R., Bailie R.C., Whiting W.B. and Shaeiwitz J.A., "Analysis, Synthesis, and Design of Chemical
Processes", Prentice Hall, 2003.
3. R. Smith, Chemical process design and integration, John Wiley, 2005.
4. M.S. Peters, K.D. Timmerhaus, R.E. West, "Plant design & Economics for Chemical Engineers", 5th
edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2003.
5. J.M. Coulson and J.F. Richardson, "Chemical Engineering", Vol. 6, 2nd Edition, Pergamon, 1993.
6. R.H. Perry, D.W. Green, J.O. Maloney, (eds.), Perrys Chemical Engineers Handbook, 7th Ed.,
McGraw- Hill, 1997.
7. Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, eds. Herman F. Mark et al. New York: Wiley, c1978-c1984.
8. Encyclopedia of Chemical Processing and Design, executive editor, John J. McKetta. New York:
Marcel Dekker, Inc, c1976-<c1999>
9. Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry, 5th ed. on CD-ROM. Weinheim : VCH, 1997.
10. Frank L. Evans, Equipment design handbook for refinery & chemical plants, 1970.
Reactor Design
11.
12.
13.
14.

E. Bruce Nauman, Chemical Reaction Design, Optimisation and Scale-up, McGraw-Hill, 2002.
O. Levenspiel, Chemical Reaction Engineering, 3rd edition, Wiley, 1999.
G.F. Froment and K.B. Bischoff, Chemical Reactor Analysis and Design, 2nd edition, Wiley, 1990.
H. Scott Fogler, Elements of Chemical Reaction Engineering, 3rd edition, Prentice Hall, 1999.

Separator Design
15. Seader, J.D., And Henley, E.J., Separation Processes Principles, John Wiley & Sons, New York ,
1998.
16. Wankat, P.C. Equilibrium Staged Separations, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs,New Jersey, 1988.
17. Holland, C. D., Fundamentals of multi-component distillation, McGraw Hill, New York, 1981.
18. Gmehling, J., U. Onken, W. Arlt, "Vapor liquid equilibrium data collection," DECHEMA Chemistry
Data Series, Vol. 1, Frankfurt/Main, Flushing, 1991.
19. Ohe, S., "Vapor-Liquid Equilibrium Data," Kodansha Ltd and Elsevier Science, 1989.
20. Hirata, M., Ohe, S., and Nagahama, K., "Computer-Aided Data Book of Vapor-Liquid
Equilibria," Kodansha Ltd and Elsevier Science, 1975.

Lecture Schedule

Weekly Q & A sessions will be held on Wednesdays (11.30-12.30), except Weeks 2 and 5
For Weeks 2 and 5, Q & A will be held on Tuesday at 10.30
Industrial talks will be held on Tuesdays the exact dates will be announced once confirmed
Tentatively, talks from Sulzer, KBC, Merck, and Office of Health and Safety