Process Control and Safety

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Employ mathematical techniques and models to design control systems relevant to chemical engineering.
• Understand the principles of risk assessment, safety management, identification of process hazards (HAZOP) and environmental impact.
• Understand the nature of safety and loss prevention processes, and identify principal hazard sources such as flammability, explosivity and toxicity.
• Explain how control systems operate and the inputs required for their design and operation.

Subject Specific Practical Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• prepare a “basis for safety” case document for reaction hazards found in the Chemical Industry, using appropriate codes of conduct and industry standards.
• Understand how elements in a complex process are interdependent and how techniques can used to integrate and synthesise these into process steps.
• Identify chemical reaction hazards based on physical and chemical properties.

Disciplinary Specific Learning Outcomes

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Describe the industrial automation of batch processes with specific attention to the S88 standard to attain flexibility of batch process operations;
• Describe and implement the basic elements of process control including analysis, tuning and design of the control system using tools of differential equations and transfer functions, with the specific focus on PID control strategy;
• Understand system dynamics and be able to predict responses to changes in a dynamic system, by designing and analysing the performance of control functions.
• Identify the major issues in the control applications in chemical engineering processes with specific attention to reactor and distillation units.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Assess the potential for hazardous reactions by conducting an analysis of heat generation and heat transfer and use of calorimetric techniques.

Process Control and Automation: Introduction to process control. Design aspects and hardware for a control system. Elements of feedback and feedforward control, process control techniques. Design of feedback controllers. Stability and Performance Analysis: Open-loop, closed-loop, on-off, P, PI, and PID Control. PID controller Tuning. PID controller tuning techniques. Control System Instrumentation: Sensor – Transmitter – Transducers. Final control elements. Valve positioners. Sizing of control valve. Signal transmission. Introduction to Transfer Functions (TF) – Laplace Transformation: Laplace transform and its properties, Transfer function models, Dynamics of first- and second-order processes. Applications of Control: To distillation, reactors. Multiple control loops in a process. Process Safety and Process Control: Layers of protection analysis. Alarm management. Risk assessment control. Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS). Safety, hazards, and control in reactions and reactors. Control and safety documentation; legal frameworks and standards. Practical: Laboratory and computer-based exercises using a PID control unit or simulation.

Teaching will be done with a combination of formal lectures, paper-based problem-solving sessions and laboratory sessions. There will be a emphasis on active learning techniques, including workshops and tutorial sessions that focus on exercises and problems.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.