Process Calculations

PROCESS ENGINEERING: PROCESS CALCULATIONS

Process calculations are essential in process engineering. They provide quantitative analysis to ensure systems operate efficiently, safely, and within regulatory standards. Once your process design has been created, process calculations will be conducted to ensure the proposed design is feasible and meets your objectives.

These calculations encompass mass and energy balances, equipment sizing, and pipe optimisation, forming the foundation for designing, validating, and optimizing industrial processes across various engineering disciplines.

How are Process Calculations Used?

As a part of the process design assurance, process calculations analyse the proposed design to check for:

• Feasibility: To ensure the design meets the desired objectives.
• Optimisation: Identify any areas for improvement and create alternative designs if needed.
• Safety and Reliability: Analysing pressure, temperature and fluid flow rates to predict any potential risks.
• Regulatory Compliance: Quantitative evidence to demonstrate adherence to safety and regulatory standards.
• Performance Verification: Process designs can be effectively analysed using modelling and simulations to identify issues, including potential bottlenecks.
• Documentation and Reporting: Process calculations report the rationale behind process designs, an essential component of reviews, audits, and regulatory submissions.

Process Calculations in Detail

We conduct a range of process calculations to ensure you have the correct data and documentation for regulatory compliance. Learn more about the specific process calculations we complete to complement your process designs.

Heat, Mass & Energy Balance Calculations

By applying the principles of conservation of mass and energy, Heat, Mass and Energy Balance Calculations account for the mass, energy and heat that enter and leave your proposed system design.

• Mass: These process calculations analyse all the mass entering, leaving and accumulating in a system.
• Energy: This analysis calculates the energy entering a system equal to the energy leaving the system as well as any changes in energy within a system.
• Heat: The heat entering and leaving a system, plus any internal heat generation, should be the same as the change in heat within a system.

Heat, Mass, and Energy Balance Calculations can be applied to a number of industries, such as Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Environmental Engineering. For example, in reactors, the mass and energy in a system must balance to ensure the correct amount of reactants are used and products are formed.

Equipment Sizing

Equipment Sizing calculations go hand-in-hand with process design. This involves determining the appropriate dimensions and capacities of equipment required for meeting your system objectives. Calculating the appropriate equipment sizing ensures the system can handle expected loads and operate efficiently and safely as well as comply with regulatory standards.

Control Valve Sizing

Control valve sizing is the process of selecting the appropriate size of a control valve to ensure that it can regulate the flow of a fluid (liquid, gas, or steam) accurately and efficiently under varying operating conditions. Proper control valve sizing is crucial for maintaining process control, ensuring safety, and optimising system performance.

Venting and Relief Design

Venting and relief design is a critical aspect of engineering that involves the selection and design of systems to safely release excess pressure or fluid from a vessel or system to prevent catastrophic failure. Not only is this process important for ensuring the safety of personnel and the environment, but it is also a crucial part of preventing damage to process equipment.

Process Calculations Completed to Industry Standards

Process calculations are an integral part of ensuring process designs meet your requirements but also industry standards. We work meticulously to ensure all relevant regulatory standards are met, including:

• British Standards
• ISO
• ASME
• ACSE

Make Sense of Process Calculations with IDEA

Have peace of mind that your process designs meet your objectives and regulatory standards with IDEA’s Process Calculations. Each of our calculations provide quantifiable evidence that contributes to process design assurance making sure your designs are feasible and efficient. If you are looking for tailored solutions and comprehensive process designs that include process calculations or need your process design analysed, get in touch with us today to find out how we can help with your process engineering projects.

Process Calculations FAQs

How are process calculations used in regulatory compliance?

Process calculations support regulatory compliance by providing data and analyses that demonstrate adherence to safety, efficiency, and environmental standards. They also help document design decisions and justify design choices, providing a rationale to regulatory authorities.

How do process calculations contribute to process optimisation?

Process calculations identify opportunities for improvement and evaluate alternative design options. By analysing performance metrics, they help optimise parameters for efficiency, yield, and cost-effectiveness in process designs.

Are process calculations and process design assurance related?

Process calculations provide the necessary quantitative evidence to support the procedure of process design assurance. Both of these elements ensure that the process design meets all the necessary performance, safety, and regulatory standards.