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Department of Chemical Engineering, Unit Catalogue 2007/08


XX20165 Design & safety

Credits: 6
Level: Intermediate
Semester: 2
Assessment: CW 100%
Requisites:
Aims: To deal with the philosophy and methods of process design; introduce the techniques for safe design and loss prevention; to give the students a practical grounding in mechanical design of plant and in particular pressure vessels and to provide a background from which to appreciate the role of electrical and electronic technology in chemical engineering.
Learning Outcomes:
After successfully completing this unit students should be able to:
* Formulate an approach to a design problem;
* Produce a solution to a design problem taking into account the problem specification, raw material and energy requirements, electrical power and control requirements and simple energy integration for the design;
* Understand the interaction of component units in a design;
* Develop a flow sheet with preliminary costings for a process;
* Be able to design an individual unit of the flow sheet and produce an engineering sketch and preliminary mechanical design of the unit;
* Produce a risk assessment for the design and COSHH assessments where appropriate;
* Include in the design relevant safety and control equipment.
Skills:
Analysis and problem solving (taught/facilitated and assessed).
Content:

* Synthesis of problems and analysis of alternative solutions, introduction to optimisation of systems; accounting for uncertainty in data and designing for future developments.
* Introduction to energy integration;
* Mechanical design of plant: introduction, stress and strain, temperature and pressure effects, selection of materials, corrosion allowances and pressure effects, wall thickness; safety factors, cracks, plastic regime; flanges and gaskets, types of welds; stress concentration, openings and branches; bending and supports, thin wall theory; vessel ends; weight loads, wind loads, vessel supports: introduction to use of commercial mechanical software package;
* Safety and loss studies: case studies into detection and evaluation of hazards; introduction to MOND Fire and Explosion Index, HAZOP and HAZAN, maintenance and work permit systems, introduction various codes of practice, BSS's, legislation relating to design, COSHH;
* Electronic and electrical technology: Ohms law, Kirchoff's laws, Faraday's laws; passive and active components; impedance; DC and AC circuit theory; single and three phase power systems; AC/DC conversion techniques; transformers and simple AC and DC machines; semi-conductors and semi-conductor devices; amplifiers, gates and memories, simple analogue and digital circuits; A to D and D to A converters; tranducers; instrumentation, computers and applications; interfacing real time data acquisitions and data transmittion; safety in hazardous environments -Zener barriers, intrinsic safety, area classification and codes.