Process Design, Economics, and Project Engineering

The principal goal of this textbook is to prepare process and chemical engineers for careers in a wide variety of process-related jobs. This book will also serve as a reference resource for engineers working in the process and process design industries. It assumes prerequisite knowledge of material and energy balances, heat transfer, fluid flow, and mass transfer but does not require any prerequisite knowledge of economics, process control, process safety, or material selection. Its structure is uniquely organized to follow the project life cycle that is most commonly used by engineering contractors and the operating companies they serve in the process industries.

• Covers both retrofit and new process projects
• Includes a set of easy-to-use, step-by-step preliminary equipment sizing methods
• Offers realistic rules of thumb for equipment sizing and pressure profiles
• Discusses professional development topics such as time management, planning and scheduling, teamwork, leadership, conflict resolution, technical writing, effective meetings, and oral communication
• Addresses safety and sustainability considerations in process design
• Includes a unified suite of cost estimating methods for simple retrofits, major retrofits, and grassroots projects
• Covers process/project economics and how to evaluate process opportunities, including a method to estimate economic benefits for difficult to quantify opportunities
• Includes information on plant layout, auxiliary systems, and process automation
• Features homework problems and examples, case study example reports, Visio drawing templates, and Excel workbooks with example calculations for economic analysis

This textbook is aimed at advanced undergraduate students in chemical engineering studying process plant design and economics and serves as a handbook for practicing process and process project engineers. A solutions manual and lecture slides are available to qualifying adopting instructors.

Wayne Seames is the Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of North Dakota (UND), Grand Forks. An Arizona native, Seames earned a BS in chemical engineering at the University of Arizona, Tucson, in 1979. His 16-year industrial career included assignments as a process engineer, controls project engineer, and process control group leader. In 1992, he was assigned as project manager for plant automation systems for the Ras Tanura Upgrade and Expansion project, one of the largest process control-related projects in the world. In 1995, Seames returned to Arizona, where he earned a PhD in chemical engineering in July 2000. He has planned and managed over 100 research projects during his academic career.

His teaching-related academic awards include the 2018 UND Foundation/Lydia and Arthur Saiki Faculty Award for Individual Excellence in Teaching; the 2013 UND Faculty Scholar Award for Excellence in Scholarship, Teaching, and Service; the 2012 UND Faculty Spirit of Achievement Award; the 2011 UND Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor Award for sustained excellence as a tenured faculty member; and the 2006 Professor of the Year Award from the UND School of Engineering and Mines. He was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2017. He is a named inventor on eight U.S. patents. Among his many refereed research publications are five documenting preliminary design and economic analyses of novel and emerging process technologies.