Title: Systematic retrofit methodology for chemical batch processes to improve economic and production performance

Authors: Yeshwant Raj; Himanshu Gupta

Addresses: Mechanical Engineering Department, Sri Venkateshwara College of Engineering, Chennai, India ' School of Mechanical Engineering, Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar, India

Abstract: In the process industry, whenever there is new product introduced then generally it is manufactured at any of the existing plant utilities that are being used for any other previous product. Now with certain modifications in plant setup, it is then utilised and made compatible with formulations process of new product. This process is termed as retrofitting of plant utilities. For example, the product 'A' is being manufactured at a plant that is having five reactors and various other equipments. It is decided that some new product 'B' would be manufactured in the same plant by taking the change over from 'A'. The mechanical engineer section then would do some modifications in the existing plant as they could inter connect only three rectors or more based on the requirement of manufacturing process of new product 'B' and also with certain extra fittings it is made change over to new product 'B'. The objective is not restricted to economic process improvement as ecological aspects related to the process energy consumption are also investigated and Pareto-front analysis is conducted. By retrofitting it has been concluded with a massive change in the efficiency in both the aspects.

Keywords: retrofitting; chemical batch processing; batch reactors; crystallisers; profit; economic performance; systematic retrofit; production performance; process improvement; energy consumption.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2016.077994

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2016 Vol.10 No.2, pp.190 - 208

Received: 13 Sep 2014
Accepted: 01 Oct 2014
Published online: 31 Jul 2016 *

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