Chemical production processes consist of many complex apparatuses involving both moving and static parts as well as interconnecting pipes, control mechanisms and electronics, mechanical and thermal stages, heat exchangers, waste and side product processing units, power ducts and many others. Bringing such a complicated unit online and ensuring its continued productivity requires substantial skill at anticipating, detecting and solving acute problems. This book is the professional's and student's entrance to the fascinating and important world of trouble shooting for chemical, pharmaceutical and other production processes.

Avoid wasting time and money on recurring plant process problems by applying the practical, five-step solution in Process Engineering Problem Solving: Avoiding "The Problem Went Away, but it Came Back" Syndrome. Combine cause and effect problem solving with the formulation of theoretically correct working hypotheses and find a structural and pragmatic way to solve real-world issues that tend to be chronic or that require an engineering analysis. Utilize the fundamentals of chemical engineering to develop technically correct working hypotheses that are key to successful problem solving.

Details the best methods to achieve consistently outstanding productivity solving technical problems. Includes symptom acquisition and reproduction, damage control, general maintenance techniques, divide and conquer techniques, testing methods, solving intermittents, bottleneck analysis. Guides the reader in achieving and maintaining the proper mental state for productive troubleshooting. Includes tips on career optimization through effective troubleshooting. An entire chapter is devoted to troubleshooting computers and networks, and another chapter is devoted to troubleshooting software.

This book brings a fresh new approach to practical problem solving in engineering, covering the critical concepts and ideas that engineers must understand to solve engineering problems. Problem Solving for New Engineers: What Every Engineering Manager Wants You to Know provides strategy and tools needed for new engineers and scientists to become apprentice experimenters armed only with a problem to solve and knowledge of their subject matter. When engineers graduate, they enter the work force with only one part of what’s needed to effectively solve problems -- Problem solving requires not just subject matter expertise but an additional knowledge of strategy. With the combination of both knowledge of subject matter and knowledge of strategy, engineering problems can be attacked efficiently. This book develops strategy for minimizing, eliminating, and finally controlling unwanted variation such that all intentional variation is truly representative of the variables of interest.

THE FIRST BOOK OF ITS KIND ON DISTILLATION TECHNOLOGY The last half-century of research on distillation has tremendously improved our understanding and design of industrial distillation equipment and systems. High-speed computers have taken over the design, control, and operation of towers. Invention and innovation in tower internals have greatly enhanced tower capacity and efficiency. With all these advances, one would expect the failure rate in distillation towers to be on the decline. In fact, the opposite is the case: the tower failure rate is on the rise and accelerating. Distillation Troubleshooting collects invaluable hands-on experiences acquired in dealing with distillation and absorption malfunctions, making them readily accessible for those engaged in solving today's problems and avoiding tomorrow's. The first book of its kind on the distillation industry, the practical lessons it offers are a must for those seeking the elusive path to trouble-free distillation. Distillation Troubleshooting covers over 1,200 case histories of problems, diagnoses, solutions, and key lessons. Coverage includes: * Successful and unsuccessful struggles with plugging, fouling, and coking * Histories and prevention of tray, packing, and internals damage * Lessons taught by incidents and accidents during shutdowns, commissioning, and abnormal operation * Troubleshooting distillation simulations to match the real world * Making packing liquid distributors work * Plant bottlenecks from intermediate draws, chimney trays, and feed points * Histories of and key lessons from explosions and fires in distillation towers * Prevention of flaws that impair reboiler and condenser performance * Destabilization of tower control systems and how to correct it * Discoveries from shutdown inspections * Suppression of foam and accumulation incidents A unique resource for improving the foremost industrial separation process, Distillation Troubleshooting transforms decades of hands-on experiences into a handy reference for professionals and students involved in the operation, design, study, improvement, and management of large-scale distillation.

This thoroughly updated edition of Fluid Catalytic Cracking Handbook provides practical information on the design, operation, troubleshooting, and optimization of fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) facilities. Based on the author's years of field experience, this expanded, second edition covers the latest technologies to improve the profitability and reliability of the FCC units, and provides several "no-to-low-cost" practical recommendations. A new chapter supplies valuable recommendations for debottlenecking and optimizing the performance of cat cracker operations.

Fractionators, separators and accumulators, cooling towers, gas treating, blending, troubleshooting field cases, gas solubility, and density of irregular solids * Hundreds of common sense techniques, shortcuts, and calculations.