There are various stages and disciplines involved in designing and developing a plant. In this article, Venkateshkumar Dhanakotti explains how plant owners can benefit by collaborating with enhanced operating station (EOS) across the globe for the design and development cycle to speed up the time for plant realisation and overcome challenges.

 

There is an upheaval in customer demand for “personalised” products which results in increasing product and process complexities for development and production adding to the challenges that manufacturing enterprises face on a daily basis. Increasing complexity and the need to produce multiple product variations simultaneously, at  different production plants that are diversely located globally are a cause of concern for the manufacturing industry.

 

There is a growing need for integrated information flow and streamlined automated processes, which are exceedingly flexible, easy to adapt and highly efficient. Understanding that an engineering plant is complex arrangement of different equipment working in a synchronised manner to produce the desired product, plant designing involves multi-disciplinary engineering from mechanical, chemical, electrical to civil engineering and much more. The amount of data handled during plant design and building is humongous. However with the advent of computer applications, communications, design codes and standardisation of practices in plant design it is now possible to collaborate in design, installation and commissioning.

 

Questions that summarise the issues

 

To stay in the business while upgrading plants to meet growing demands, plant owners and plant integrators face a list of questions that usher the need for a streamlined process plant design engineering:

 

 

Challenges in process plant design engineering

 

Design, integration as well as layout of industrial equipment in terms of plant design and engineering to ensure operational efficiency become highly crucial since it involves many factors and since in recent future, the plant sizes have been growing at a faster speed. The challenges involved in plant layout design also have hiked skyward.

 

To meet the increasing demand and maintain the pace of the rapidly growing market, all the process, utilities & manufacturing industry are focusing on core technologies and new products suitable for local market as well as increasing global requirement.

 

Engineering solutions should be agile, innovative, robust and profitable at the same time. It’s well known what a client wants from the engineering services, but very few have the resources and the capabilities to achieve that feat.

 

The common most challenges that process plant design engineering faces can be summarised as below:

 

 

Solutions to ensure optimised cost and reduced time-to-market Understanding that the challenges require customised and niche engineering services, which best suit the needs of dynamic market environment. Be it in plant design engineering in various domains such as water, power, and oil & gas in mechanical, piping, civil, E&I, controls & operation and structural services, there is a  growing need of streamlining processes to meet increasing global demand while keeping the cost low and within budget.

 

The plant design engineering process can be divided into two broad phases. Phase 1: The process design is also called as basic engineering, which it starts with the initial selection of the process to be used in a plant, through to the issuing of the process flowsheets (Process Flow diagram) and it includes the selection, specification, design of equipment and preparation of the piping and instrumentation diagrams. In a typical organisation, this phase is the responsibility of the process design group. Also the basic engineering involves in economic design of plant layout, arranging the equipment as per the process with all other aspects to run the plant. This work will be carried out by chemical, mechanical & civil engineers.

 

Phase 2: The phase 2 of plant design engineering is detail engineering, which it includes the detailed mechanical design of equipment, the structural, civil, interconnecting piping, electrical design, MTO, specifications and procurement. These activities will be the responsibility of detail engineering team, having expertise in the whole range of engineering disciplines.

 

Plant design engineering industries

 

A plant or factory is a collection of machines that work together to produce a finished product. A complete plant not only contains production machinery, but includes infrastructure such as power, cooling, waste and ventilation systems. The plant design engineering is the design of layout and development of equipment to transform raw materials into a product through a series of operation to produce final product.

 

Below are some examples of plants that oblige plant design engineering:

 

 

Market situation of plant design engineering

 

The market situation of plant design engineering is intensely interrelated with the individual engineering industries (like water, oil & gas, power etc) growth, which it leads to extension of existing plant or new plant design for increase in global market demand. Given below are forecast on plant design engineering in water, oil & gas and power, which will helps us to forecast the market of plant design engineering globally.

 

Water market in plant design

 

The global water market is $630 billion out of these, 51 per cent is water & wastewater utilities and remaining 49 per cent is water & waste water solutions & services. Most of the plant design & consulting happens in water & waste water utilities, plant design comprises 9 per cent, therefore $ 29 billion of market revenue.

 

Power plant design

 

According to the comprehensive global report on thermal power plant markets of Global Industry Analysis (GIA), the global thermal power generation is forecasted to reach 20.2 trillion KWH by 2020, driven by spirally demand for electricity.

 

Due to higher levels of economic growth and anticipated improvements in the quality of life over the next few years, developing countries will likely see a rapid increase in power demand. India, for instance, is poised to see annual consumption increases of up to 3.2 per cent between 2012 and 2040, while China’s annual demand is forecast to grow by 2.1 per cent for the same time period as per the source OECD.

 

China and India are at the forefront of this growth with the two countries expected to install 165 and 50 new coal-fired power generation plants installing into 250 GW and 70 GW of incremental power. It is obvious the global market demand increase leads to build & design new plant. Which will increase the demand of Plant design engineering globally.

 

Oil & gas plant design

 

According to the report released by Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the size of the world economy in 2040 is anticipated to be 234 per cent that of 2016. The overall GDP increase is estimated at almost $ 141 trillion. Much of the expected growth in the global economy is driven by emerging economies, with China and India accounting for around half of the increase. Growth in the world economy requires more energy, whereas energy demand increases by 30 per cent.

 

Global liquids demand (oil, biofuels, and other liquid fuels) increases by around 15 Mb/d, to reach 110 Mb/d by 2035.

 

All of this demand growth comes from emerging economies, as rising prosperity leads to increased oil demand, with China accounting for half of the growth. In contrast, OECD oil demand continues its trend decline (-8 Mb/d). Supply increases are driven by holders of large-scale, low-cost resources, especially in the Middle East, US and Russia, as these producers are assumed to respond to the growing abundance of oil resources by asserting their competitive advantage.

 

OPEC is assumed to account for nearly 70 per cent of global supply growth, increasing by 9 Mb/d to 48 Mb/d by 2040.

 

The energy demand is fulfilled by the various fuel types like oil, coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, wind and biomass.

 

The world primary demand by fuel type is forecasted upto 2040, this will result in addition of plant to overcome the market demand. This addition of plant demands the plant design engineering and its services.

 

Need for collaboration in plant design engineering

 

Very high demand for plant design and short time to market is adding to lack of available expert engineers and skills to do this work.

 

With availability of software tools and communications, process plant design phases of basic and detail engineering - which forms bulk of the work - can be done remotely across the globe with cost advantages that can be leveraged with experience EOS.Time to design, install and operationalise is reduced by seeking help from EOS.

 

About the Author:

 

Venkateshkumar Dhanakotti is a Technical Manager in QuEST Global and has over 14 years of experience in plant design engineering. He has more than 7 years of experience in EPC projects in mining plant design engineering. In his four years in Quest, he has designed many industrial water/wastewater plants like ETP, STP, ZLD UPW & WTP plants in various capacities for South East Asia and Middle East Region.