Process Integration

With growing global competition, the process industries must spare no effort in insuring continuous process improvement in terms of increasing profitability; conservation of resources and prevention of pollution. The question is how can engineers achieve these goals for a given process with numerous units and streams? Until recently conventional approaches to process design and operation put emphasis only on individual units and parts of the process. A more powerful integrated approach was lacking. The new field of Process Integration looks towards the processing plant as a whole in its attempt to find solutions and improvements. Research over the past two decades has resulted in many techniques that allow engineers to better understand complex facilities and significantly enhance their performance. This textbook presents a comprehensive and authoritative treatment of the concepts, tools and applications of Process Integration. Emphasis is given to systematic ways of analyzing process performance. Graphical, algebraic and mathematical procedures are presented in detail. In addition to covering the fundamentals of the subject, the book also includes numerous case studies and examples that illustrate how Process Integration is solving actual industrial problems. It includes a systematic methodology for analyzing the process as an integrated system, identifying global insights of the process, and generating optimum strategies and solutions. It has a proper mix of fundamental principles, insightful tools, and industrial applications. It provides generic techniques that are applicable to a wide variety of processing facilities. It is packed with case studies, practical tools, charts, tables, and performance criteria. It presents an extensive bibliography to provide ready access to process integration literature, and an excellent review of state-of-the-art technology, development trends, and future research directions.