New Process Engineering
Creating New and Novel Processes
What We Do
We can support you through the entire development process from in initial idea, all the way to operating the large-scale commercial process, and while the actual work and development path depends on the specific process, the work we do can approximately be divided into the following areas:
- Technology scale-up assessments
- Concept studies
- Laboratory development work
- Pilot plant creation
- Engineering design
- Large scale plant operation and optimisation
Technology Scale-up Assessment
The aim of the technology scale-up assessment is to determine the most effective approach to take for developing a new process. While the assessment consists of multiple aspects, the main aim is to understand the specific risks and barriers that could prevent the process from being commercialised.
The risks and barriers will vary depending on the type of process, the current development stage, the project constraints, and the industry. And will include factors such as: economics, scale-ability, regulations, operability, environmental requirements, development time, resources required, reliability, etc.
For example, a highly hazardous process may be more expensive and time consuming to test, a pharmaceutical product may have higher regulation barriers, a commodity process may require a more efficient and reliable process, etc.
The goal of the assessment is to understand the specific risk profile of the process, determine the potential risk mitigation measures required, and use that information to create a technology development roadmap that maps out the most efficient method for commercialising the process.
Concept Studies
A concept study converts the initial process information into a preliminary engineering design that provides the basis for all future engineering work.
The information included in a concept study can vary depending on the requirements of the process and project, however they generally include the following engineering deliverables:
- Boundary limit definitions
- Process flowsheets
- Heat and mass balance
- Equipment selection and design basis
- Process safety assessments
- Control and operating philosophies
- Economic assessments
Laboratory Development Work
Given the nature of new process development there are a large range of potential experiments that may need to be undertaken, these may include for example:
- Comparisons of different process options or conditions
- Feasibility experiments to assess equipment designs
- Exploratory experiments to find initial process operating conditions
- Process development experiments to develop single or multiple parts of the process together
- Optimisation experiments to improve the performance of certain parts of the process
The type and design of the experiments depends on the specifics of the process and the project, and we can support you through all stages of the process, including experimental selection and design, safety and risk assessments, carrying out of experiments, interpretation and analysis of results, troubleshooting, etc.
Pilot plant design and operation
We can design, manage, and support the creation and operation of pilot plants.
This work could include:
- Designing the pilot plant
- Undertaking technical and commercial assessments of vendor proposals
- Managing the design and installation of the equipment
- Testing, start-up, and commissioning
- Operation and optimisation
- Data collection and analysis
Engineering design
After creating a successful pilot plant, we can take the learning and data generated during its operation and create a design for a full-scale commercial process.
Large scale plant design involves two main stages:
- Front end engineering design (FEED)
- Detailed design
Front end engineering designs (FEEDs) are created by multi discipline teams of engineers, and cover many aspects of the plant design, construction and operation. We are able to support the creation of all process engineering deliverables, and manage the other disciplines and the overall project.
Detailed design involves taking the FEED package and turning that into the full design of the process. This is done by further developing the FEED deliverables to make them location, process and equipment specific, and we can support the project and help create all of the process engineering deliverables required during this stage of the project.
Large scale plant operation and optimisation
Once the process has been built, we can help commission it, start it up and improve its operation. This work can range from:
- Carrying out commissioning
- Starting-up the process
- Trouble shooting
- Gathering data during operation
- Debottlenecking the process
- Improving process performance