Process Design Strategy

All rights reserved, Armando B. Corripio, Ph.D., P.E., 2019

These notes present a strategy for the design of chemical

processes. The basic ideas are based on the book, Conceptual Design
of Chemical Processes, by James Douglas, McGraw-Hill, 1988.

Process Design Strategy........................................ 1

1. What is the purpose of engineering? ....................... 1

2. Why is a design strategy needed? .......................... 2

2.1 How is engineering like art? ........................... 3

2.2 Levels of estimates of the required capital investment . 4

2.2 Estimate of the costs of raw materials ................. 5

2.3 Design Strategy for Study Estimate .................... 10

3. Summary .................................................. 13

Study Questions ............................................. 13

Problems .................................................... 14

1. What is the purpose of engineering?

The purpose of engineering is to produce material wealth. This

does not mean the wealth of the engineer, but the wealth of
society. Civil engineers do this by building bridges, roads,
buildings, dams, etc. Electrical engineers do it by designing and
building electronic devices, electrical power distribution lines,
motor controls and the likes. Mechanical engineers do it by

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designing and maintaining compressors, automobiles, trucks, and
such.
How do chemical engineers create wealth for society? By
designing, operating and maintaining processes to produce, by
chemical and biochemical transformation of materials into valuable
products and the purification of such products to make them useful.
The objective of these processes may be:
 To create a completely new material
 To find new more efficient ways to produce a product
 To produce instead of purchase the raw material for a chemical
process
 To convert waste into usable products
 To cut production costs by using of new materials of
construction that permit safe operation at high temperatures
and pressures.

2. Why is a design strategy needed?

Over 50% of the products produced by chemical companies today were

developed over the last 50 years. These products are first usually
developed by chemists in the laboratory and their commercial
production must be investigated by chemical engineers. The chances
of commercialization for a new product are:
 1-3% at the research stage
 10-25% at the development stage
 40-60% at the pilot plant stage.
So, most new process ideas don’t make it to the commercial stage,
and, because of this, it is very important to follow a procedure
that can determine the commercial feasibility of a process as
quickly and inexpensively as possible. Putting too much effort

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into a design before it is clear that it has a chance to succeed
wastes engineering time, which is expensive.
Furthermore, design projects are under-defined, requiring
many assumptions by the engineer to decide on the feasibility of
the process. The design strategy must then include many guidelines
for arriving at sound assumptions.
These notes are intended to teach you a strategy to design
chemical processes. If you decide to ignore them and just
haphazardly jump into calculations, you will miss the opportunity
of becoming effective chemical engineers.

2.1 How is engineering like art?

An artist outlines his painting before adding the details. Figure

1 shows an example taken from the How to Draw section of the comic
strip Comics for Kids.

Figure 1. Steps in creating a drawing

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Similarly, an engineer first outlines the project and
progressively adds details evaluating the economic potential at
each stage. As the design progresses there are different levels of
cost estimates, each including more detail and requiring more
engineering effort.
There are two components to the estimate of the cost of a
process, the estimate of the required capital investment and the
estimate of the annual cost of operating the process.
 The capital cost is the one-time cost of purchasing and
installing the process equipment and getting the process
ready for operation.
 The operating cost is the cost of raw materials, utilities
(steam, coolants, fuel), operating labor and their
supervision and maintenance costs. These costs are incurred
day after day and year after year of process operation.
There are different levels of detail in estimating both the capital
and operating costs, as we shall see next.

2.2 Levels of estimates of the required capital investment

The following are some typical levels of cost estimates:

1. Order of Magnitude Estimate. Based on previous cost data for
a similar process. Requires only the proposed production rate
and literature or company history data on the total capital
cost of a similar process. The cost estimate has an accuracy
of 40% which is what “order of magnitude” means. It requires
minimal engineering effort.
2. Study Estimate. Based on the installed cost of only the major
pieces of equipment—reactors, exchangers and separation
equipment—and simple factors to estimate the related capital
costs. The cost of utilities required by this equipment is

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 also estimated along with the cost of the equipment. A study
estimate has an accuracy of 25% and the engineering effort
costs about 0.1% of the total capital investment.
3. Preliminary Estimate. Based on more detailed design of the
major pieces of equipment and the inclusion of most of the
minor pieces of equipment. The accuracy is 12% and the
engineering costs are about 0.2% of the total capital
investment.
4. Definitive Estimate. Based on almost complete design, but
before final specifications. The accuracy is 6% and the
engineering costs are about 5% of the total capital
investments.
5. Detailed Estimate. Based on final drawings and specifications
and equipment and vendor and contractor quotes. The accuracy
is 3%.
The purpose of following this staged procedure through any process
design should be obvious to you. To be able to determine that a
project does not have a chance to be profitable before too much
engineering effort and costs are spent on it.
It is very important for you to realize that engineering time
is valuable and most be used efficiently. As someone who will soon
be employed as an engineer you must start thinking of your time as
valuable also. Your motto should be “DO LITTLE and DO IT WELL.”

2.2 Estimate of the costs of raw materials

The cost of raw materials is almost always the major operating

cost of a process. It constitutes from 65 to 90% of the total
annual cost. The amount of raw material required per unit of
product produced can be determined by a material balance based on
the principle of conservation of mass, and some knowledge of the
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yield of the process. Yield data for a particular process may be
obtained from
 a kinetic model of the reactions,
 results of laboratory experiments on the reactions,
 the literature.
The yield is different for each raw material which is a reactant
in the reactions that produce the product. It is defined by

Actual product rate

Yield = Product rate if there are no losses (1)

There are two types of losses in a process that cause a reduction

in yield:
 Reaction selectivity losses. These are losses of either the
reactants or the product due to side reactions that produce
other products.
 Separation losses. These are losses in the separation train
due to the fact that it is not possible to recover 100% of
the unreacted reactants or product in the separation
equipment. To keep separation losses low it is usually good
design to design the separation equipment for high
recoveries, greater than 99% if possible, when the
unrecovered materials are lost to waste streams.
Selectivity losses can normally be reduced by selecting a better
catalyst, adjusting the reactor temperature and pressure,
adjusting the ratio of the reactants, or improving the design of
the reactor. Separation losses are reduced by increasing the
recovery but this usually results in larger and more expensive
equipment to purchase and operate.
Useful information about numerous processes including yields
can be found in the following references:

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  Ullmann’s Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry, 5th ed., 1985.
Call number: TP 9 U57.
 Kirk-Othmer’s Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology. Call
Number: TP 9 E685 1992.

Chemical Prices
Once the required amounts of raw materials are determined by the
material balances, the cost of the raw materials can be determined
with knowledge of the chemical prices. These prices are not usually
subject to the rate of inflation, but they vary following world
economic conditions just as the price of oil and gasoline vary.
For a hefty fee chemical and engineering companies can obtain the
current prices of chemicals from [Link]. Some chemical prices
may be found on the web at no charge.

Quick raw material cost estimate

A quick way to estimate the cost of raw materials is from the

chemical reactions assuming 100% yield. This estimate can be
refined by using yield data from the literature. Although these
estimates may not seem useful because it takes so little effort to
obtain them they can be really useful to tentatively estimate the
probability a process will be profitable and to compare processes
to produce a product by different reaction routes. This is possible
because the raw materials often constitute the major cost of
producing a product.

Example 1. Raw material cost required to produce benzene from toluene

Hydro-de-alkylation (HDA) is proposed to produce benzene (C6H6)

from toluene (C6H5CH3) by catalytic reaction with hydrogen (H2).

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Determine the raw material cost per lb of benzene and compare it
to the market price of benzene.
a) Assuming 100% yield.
b) Assuming a yield of 96% for toluene and 90% for hydrogen.

Solution. The reaction that produces benzene by the HDA process

is:
C6H5CH3 + H2  C6H6 + CH4

The balanced chemical reaction tells us that to produce one lbmole

of benzene it takes
 One lbmole of toluene and
 One lbmole of hydrogen.
One lbmole of methane is also produced by the reaction.
The molecular weights are 92 for toluene, 2 for hydrogen, 78
for benzene and 16 for methane. So it takes

92 lb toluene + 2 lb hydrogen  78 lb benzene + 16 lb methane

Notice that mass is conserved, 94 lb in and 94 lb out, as it must.

To estimate the chemical costs we need the chemical prices,
from [Link]:

Toluene: $3.00/gallon Benzene: $3.50/gallon

Hydrogen is a utility chemical. Its price depends on the price of

natural gas. From the document Capital and Operating Costs in
Moodle we get:

Hydrogen: $6.00/1000 SCF (SCF at 1 atm, 60°F)

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At those standard conditions the conversion factor is 380
SCF/lbmole. Toluene and benzene, being refinery products, are sold
by the gallon, like gasoline, instead of by weight.

The specific gravities, from Perry’s, Table 2-2, are 0.879 for
benzene and 0.866 for toluene.

a) For 100% yield the cost of raw materials to produce 1 lbmole

of benzene is:
$3.00 gallon
Toluene: (92 lb) = $38.3
gallon (0.866)(8.33 lb)

$6.00 380 SCF

Hydrogen: (1 lbmole) 1000 SCF = $2.28
lbmole
$38.3+$2.28
Total cost per lb of benzene: = $0.520/lb
78 lb

Or ($0.520/lb)(0.879)(8.33 lb/gallon) = $3.81/gallon

This is $0.31/gallon more costly than the market price of benzene
so we can say right away that this is not a viable process at this
time.

b) For 96% yield on benzene it takes 1/0.96 lbmole of toluene

to produce 1 lbmole of benzene:
92 lb $3.00 gallon
Toluene: ( ) = $39.9
0.96 gallon (0.866)(8.33 lb)

For 90% yield on hydrogen it takes 1/0.90 lbmole of hydrogen

to produce 1 lbmole of benzene:
1 lbmole $6.00 380 SCF
Hydrogen: ( ) 1000 SCF lbmole = $2.53
0.90
$39.9+$2.53
Total cost per lb of benzene: = $0.544/lb
78 lb

Or ($0.544/lb)(0.879)(8.33 lb/gallon) = $3.98/gallon.

The calculations on part b are based on the definition of yield,
Equation (1), as one lbmole (92 lb) of toluene should produce one
lbmole of benzene when there are no losses, but it only produces

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0.96 lbmole with a yield of 96%. Similarly, for the cost of
hydrogen.

This example has shown how a very quick calculation can

determine that a proposed process is not profitable. Similar
calculations can be used to compare the cost of producing a product
from different raw materials by the appropriate reaction routes.

2.3 Design Strategy for Study Estimate

The study estimate is one in which only the major pieces of

equipment are considered. Many minor pieces of equipment such as
pumps, storage vessels, vacuum pumps and the like are ignored and
a simple factor is added to the cost of the major equipment to
estimate their costs. Factors are also used to estimate off-site,
indirect, start-up and others costs.
The following is a procedure to carry out a study estimate of
a process in four phases.
Phase 1. Search the literature for details about the process,
particularly the reactor conditions, reaction conversions and
selectivity. If a reaction kinetics model is available, it should
be used to determine how the reactor conditions and reactant ratios
affect the selectivity and conversions. Then use the information
gathered to carry out material balances at the input-output level
to determine the required inlet flows of raw materials and recycle-
level balances to determine the recycle flows and the component
flows out of the reactors.
Phase 2. Simulate a base case of the process with a process
simulator to design the separation system and carry out the
enthalpy balances to determine the heat duties of the exchangers.
The results of the material balance calculations of Phase 1 should

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be used to get the flows of the inlet and recycle streams and to
check the accuracy of the simulation models.
Phase 3. Use the results the simulation to estimate the total
cost of the base case. The installed cost of each piece of major
equipment and the cost of its utilities, along with the cost of
raw materials are computed. Simple factors are used for offsite,
indirect and other capital costs, and for the cost of operating
labor, supervision, maintenance and other operating costs. The
itemized costs allow their comparison to determine which items
contribute the most to the total production cost.
Phase 4. Process alternatives are proposed and evaluated to
reduce the total production costs. Those alternatives that reduce
the cost are adopted and those that increase the cost are rejected.
The final design then incorporates the adopted alternatives.
Progress reports are prepared at the completion of each phase
and a final design report prepared to describe and justify the
proposed process and report its estimated cost along with all the
important environmental and safety considerations. A
recommendation is given in the report as to whether the process
has promise and the next level of design, a Preliminary Estimate,
should be carried out.

The Base Case

The base case which is simulated in Phase 2 and sized and costed
in Phase 3 must be as simple as possible. When more than one scheme
is possible the simplest one must be selected and a note made of
the other options to be considered in Phase 4 to reduce costs. It
is not a good idea to select the more complex design on the
assumption it can reduce costs before determining if the costs
involved are significant or if the more complex design reduces

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costs and by how much. This knowledge will be acquired in Phase 4
after Phase 3 is completed for the base case. You should make sure
you understand this concept because it is a very important part of
the design strategy.
The following are some examples of the characteristics of the
base case design.
 Heat exchangers. Simple exchangers using utilities such as
steam or fuel for heating and water or refrigerant for
cooling. That is, no energy integration through cross-
exchangers must be considered in the base case. They belong
in Phase 4 to conserve energy and see if their additional
cost is justified by the energy savings.
 Distillation train. The minimum required number of
distillation columns must be used. If an additional column
can reduce costs it should be considered in Phase 4 where the
additional cost of the column can be compared to the cost
savings. Exchangers to pre-heat or cool the feeds to
distillation columns do not belong in the base case.
 Losses in waste streams. Equipment to recover losses of raw
materials and products in waste streams should be considered
in Phase 4 where the savings in raw material costs can be
compared to the cost of the recovery equipment. In the base
case the feed rate of raw materials must be increased to make
up the losses.
 Pressure increases. Pumps must be used to increase the
pressure of liquid streams and compressors to increase the
pressure of gas and vapor streams. No expanders must be
included in the base case. Valves to drop the pressure do not
have to simulated or costed. The simulator assumes that when
the pressure drops a valve is present when it is not included

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 in the simulation. Valves complicate the simulation because
each valve requires an additional stream.
After the total cost of the base case design is determined in Phase
3 of the project alternatives are proposed and evaluated to reduce
the major costs. The final design incorporates those alternatives
that reduce the production cost.

3. Summary

These notes have outlined a strategy for designing chemical

processes. The strategy is required because the design problem is
often under-defined requiring many assumptions from the designer
and because many proposed processes do not prove to have a
probability of success requiring that the profitability of the
process be determined with as little effort and engineering cost
as possible. The strategy consists of designing the process in
different stages each providing a greater degree of detail, just
as an artist creates a painting or sculpture. Different levels of
estimating the production cost have been presented and a design
strategy for the study estimate level has been outlined.

Study Questions

1. What is the purpose of engineering? How does a chemical

engineer achieve this purpose?
2. Why is a design strategy required?
3. Which are the levels of detail for estimating the capital
cost of a process? What percentage of the process ideas that
make to the pilot plant level are expected to make to final
design?

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 4. Why is it important to estimate the cost of the raw materials
required by a process?
5. Outline a quick procedure for estimating the cost of raw
materials? What data is required for such estimate?
6. Outline the phases of producing a study estimate of the cost
of a process.
7. What are the properties of the base case design?
8. Why is it necessary to estimate the total cost of the base
case design before considering design alternatives?

Problems
1. Estimate the raw material cost per pound of ethylbenzene
product by alkylation of benzene. Assume (a) 100% yield, and
(b) 95% yield on benzene and 90% yield on ethylene. Compare
with the market price of ethylbenzene. The market prices are
$0.60/lb ethylene, $3.40/gallon benzene (sp. Gr. = 0.88),
$0.60/lb ethylbenzene.
2. You must determine if a process to produce synthetic ethyl
alcohol is economically feasible by estimating the cost of
the raw materials to produce it.
a. Estimate the raw material cost per pound of ethanol
product by catalytic reaction of ethylene with 600-psig
steam assuming 100% yields. Ethanol price in Problem 1,
use $9.04/1000 lb 600-psig steam.
b. Estimate the raw material cost assuming 90% yield on
ethylene and 50% yield on steam.
c. For the yields of part (b), estimate the annual amount
of ethylene in metric tons/year, and the total annual
cost required to produce 120,000 metric tons per year
of ethanol.
Compare with the market price of ethanol fuel and

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 recommend whether to proceed with the design of the
process or not. State all assumptions.
3. It is desired to investigate if a process to produce iso-
propyl alcohol (IPA) is economically feasible by estimating
the cost of the raw materials to produce it.
a. Estimate the raw material cost per pound of IPA product
by catalytic reaction of propylene with 600-psig steam
assuming 100% yields. Price of 600-psig steam in Problem
2, use $0.50/lb propylene, $0.65/lb IPA.
b. Estimate the raw material cost assuming 90% yield on
propylene and 50% yield on steam.
c. For the yields of part (b), estimate the annual amount
of propylene in metric tons/year, and the total annual
cost required to produce 220,000 metric tons per year
of IPA.
Compare with the market price of IPA and recommend
whether to proceed with the design of the process or
not. State all assumptions.
4. Estimate the raw material cost per pound of styrene product
by dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene. Assume (a) 100% yield,
and (b) 94% yield. Compare with the market price of styrene.
Ethylbenzene price in Problem 1, use $0.70/lb styrene and a
credit of $3.00/ft3 of by-product H2 at STP (1 lbmole = 380
ft3 at STP of 60⁰F, 1 atm).
5. Estimate the raw material cost per pound of cumene product by
alkylation of benzene. Assume (a) 100% yield, and (b) 96%
yield on benzene and 80% yield on propylene. Compare with the
market price of cumene. Benzene price in Problem 1, propylene
price in Problem 3, use $0.50/lb cumene.
6. Estimate the net raw material cost per pound of phenol product
by oxidation of cumene. Assume (a) 100% yield, and (b) 95%
yield. Assume we use the oxygen from air and has no cost.
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 Compare with the market price of phenol. Cumene price in
Problem 5, use $0.70/lb phenol and a credit of $0.65/lb
acetone by-product.
7. Compare the raw material cost per pound of aniline product by
(a) nitration of benzene to nitrobenzene with nitric acid
followed by hydrogenation of the nitrobenzene and (b)
reaction of ammonia with phenol. Assume 100% yield. Compare
with the market price of aniline. Benzene and nitrobenzene
prices in Problem 1, phenol price in Problem 6, use $215/2000
lb nitric acid, $1.32/lb ammonia, $0.40/lb aniline, $6.00/ft3
of H2 at STP (1 lbmole = 380 ft3 at STP of 60⁰F, 1 atm).

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