20th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering – ESCAPE20 S. Pierucci and G. Buzzi Ferraris (Editors) © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Computer-aided web-based application to modular plant design Łukasz Hady, Günter Wozny Berlin Institute of Technology, Chair of Process Dynamics and Operation, Sekr. KWT-9, Str. des 17. Juni 135, D-10623 Berlin,
[email protected]
Abstract In order to support the design activities as well as the reusability of available examined solutions in developing new technical projects in the field of modular plant design, a web-based application for quality- and know-how assurance, Reuse-Atlas, was developed. Using exemplary designed modules, aspects of a quality- and know-how assurance as well as the reusability of the engineering data was implemented and transferred to Reuse-Atlas. The Reuse-Atlas includes structures for the modules of different plant complexity like structural group- and plant group-modules. It allows more efficiency by tracking of undertaken decisions and assumptions during the module development and design and therefore simplicity in designing the new plants and modifying the old ones. Keywords: computer-aided plant design, modular plant design, modularization
1. Introduction New plant planning methods, as for example module technology, combined with computer-aided plant design offer basis for better quality assurance in the early stage of process development and plant layout. In regard to the numerous designed plants the possibility for reusing the available examined solutions in new projects has still not received enough attention. The reusability of the revised solutions and their technical know-how could lead to improvement in the efficiency of project development, project quality and consequently reduces cost. Plant engineering and construction companies or their divisions were always interested in reducing cost and therefore in using of existing solutions in developing new technical projects. However an appropriate selection of suitable documents and information could be a very difficult task in case of different customer requirements and missing “know-how warehouses”. For this reason the plant layout and design will be mostly started from scratch. Within the scope of plant layout and design a complete design process based on a process simulation, cost calculation, dimensioning and layout design of process units, apparatus and machines included 2Dand 3D-plant activities will be realised. The design process is iterative and is carried out on the basis of experiences of the project engineers. In order to reduce time-to-market, a given workflow, which determines the working steps and contents, will be combined with existing engineering approaches, as for example simultaneous-, concurrent- and collaborative engineering. Despite these systematic approaches, the developed solutions are like “stand-alone” solutions. These are often only adapted to the existing project conditions without consideration of superior aspects of plant layout and design, as for example modularization. It is therefore no surprise that such solutions developed by different process engineers are unique and rather rarely usable for the new technical projects. As a consequence of this, ad-hoc solutions will be generated and the assurance of the engineering know-how will be often neglected. It comes rather seldom to the
Ł. Hady and G. Wozny product costing analysis and revision of the developed solutions after the technical project is finished. An Achilles' heel is searching for appropriate information. The study results of the Marketing Research Institute carried out by Vanson Bourne in May 2007, where 610 managers from European companies were questioned shown that, an employee in a typical European company wastes in average 67 minutes per day in an ineffective searching for information. In a company with 1000 employees and an average annual salary of 50.000 Euro, it could lead to annually eight million Euro expenses (Kaiser, 2007).
2. Modular Plant Design: a future plant layout and design approach? 2.1. Concept of the Engineering Reuse The idea of module-oriented plant design is based on the definition of the process engineering units – modules, which are functionally independent (Hady et al., 2007). A modular plant consists of plant group-modules which are designed in a modular way. The plant group-modules are flexible process engineering units which are designed from smaller ones, namely from structural group-modules. Fig. 1 represents a structure of a modular plant with two approaches which can be used by modular plant engineering: Modular-Concept and Modular-Technique. The Modular-Concept characterizes the concept of the Engineering-Reuse and the Modular-Technique the concept of the Equipment Reuse. The last one is discussed within section 2.2. Modular-Concept
En gin ee rin g-R eu se Plant
Cla ss Plant groupgroupica module lE ng in e er i ng
Modular-Technique
Structural groupgroupmodule Equipment
Fig. 1. Modular structure of the plant with two approaches for modular plant design: ModularConcept and Modular-Technique
The plant group-modules are responsible for the basic operations and the structural group-modules are responsible for the basic functions as long as the whole process is covered by the plant. The configuration and layout of plant group-modules depends on the number of required basic operations. Unlike the plant group-modules, the structural group-modules are fixed process engineering units. They can only be affected with small constructional or layout changes such as near piping, order of armatures and supports. The adaptability of the structural group-modules to the conditions of new plant group-modules or whole plants during the Engineering-Reuse will be covered with a degree of flexibility around 10 to 20% for possible changes. According to this Modular Concept of Engineering Reuse (Fig. 1) various structural group-modules were developed (Hady et al., 2009a). 2.2. Concept of the Equipment Reuse The concept of the Equipment Reuse describes the possibility for planning and designing of changeable plants, which configuration could be affected and changed due to the product or performance changes or requirements as well as by adaptation of the existing configuration from a pilot plant- or mini plant-scale to the production of the plant-scale. Using modularization at this complexity level, the changeability of a plant
Computer-aided web-based application to modular plant design should be characterized and taken into consideration within the scope of the conceptual design. In addition the standardization potentials should be developed and the suitable, standardized equipment-modules should be defined and designed. In an industrial project a mobile Absorption-module was planned and designed (Fig. 2, right hand side). This Absorption-module can be operated under changed process requirements, raw materials, operation parameters as well as production performance.
Fig. 2. Absorption-Miniplant (left) and Absorption-module (right) (Mueller et al., 2009)
The engineering activities carried out during the modular plant layout and design lead to production of a large amount of documentation, as for example P&ID´s, 2D-equipment layouts, 3D-CAD models of modules as well as of information such as design rules and planning guidelines. Due to the fact that developed modules and its documentation cover know-how principles and quality characteristics, an efficient data management of modules is very important and could be considered as a support toward successful Engineering- and Equipment Reuse.
3. Online application to support of modular plant engineering The necessity of development of a tool to support of modular plant layout and design was stressed by Lueneburg (2003). The definition of module borders, levels of modularization as well as the development of the module libraries were the main statements which should be considered during the application of modularization (Lueneburg et al., 2003). In order to guarantee the know-how assurance as well as to increase quality of the developed modules, some additional aspects were taken into consideration during development of the Reuse Atlas. These are: • Assurance of the modularization- and standardization rules • Assurance of the undertaken assumptions and decisions during module design • Assurance of the variant construction. 3.1. Concept of the Reuse-Atlas Since the quality of the available equipment-parts and modules of a different complexity used for plant layout and design is so important, the concept for the assurance of available know-how principles and quality characteristics was developed. This concept of the documentation and management system of modules, so-called Reuse-Atlas, was discussed by Hady (Hady et al., 2009b). All of above mentioned documentation such as: 2D-equipment layouts, 3D-CAD models, know-how principles and quality characteristics and all other information, which corresponds to the developed modules, builds a main structure of the Reuse-Atlas. Moreover such a Reuse-Atlas should have: • Easy and intuitive handling via a web browser, user friendly interface • Possibility to be continually extended by users to cover the documentation of new structural group- or plant group-modules
Ł. Hady and G. Wozny •
Adaptability to the requirements of design and project engineers
3.2. Reuse-Atlas: application software For the implementation of the web-based Reuse Atlas a combination of operating system - web server - database system - scripting language for queries of the data base was required. As a platform for implementation of the Reuse-Atlas a so-called WAMP platform was used. WAMP stands for Windows® - Apache™ - MySQL® - PHP. The web based Reuse-Atlas was also implemented on the basis of the HTML and PHP for a web development as well as other Open-Source-Software such as MySQL® for the applied database of users, know-how principles and quality characteristics and Apache™ HTTP Server for a web server. 3.3. Structure of the Reuse-Atlas The Reuse-Atlas enables a password protected storage, updating and management of the module documentation as well as all employees an access for reading of the stored and storage of the new data via Internet. After login, a suitable data base has to be chosen or created, if the online application is used for the first time. Storage or updating cover the modular hierarchy of the plant, such as plant group- and structural group-modules and their documentation such as e.g. P&ID´s, 2D-equipment layouts, 3D-CAD models of modules, know-how principles and quality characteristics. This hierarchical structure fulfils the Top-Down decomposition shown in Fig. 1 and has only an administrative character. After a suitable data base was chosen the available hierarchical structure of plant group- and structural group-modules is displayed. The hierarchical structure of the Deisobutanizer-plant group-module is shown in Fig. 3 (left hand side).
Fig. 3. Hierarchical (modular) structure (left hand side) as well as definition of connections between plant group- and structural group-modules within a chosen data base (right hand side)
For each data base as well as each modular level of a plant a short description about e.g. the scope or application can be enclosed. At the same time the stored modules can be displayed in three different views, where either plant group- or structural group-modules can be shown and with a hierarchical structure, where plant group-modules with the associated structural group-modules can be displayed. The user interface shown in Fig. 3 (right hand side) favours the suitable connection between plant group- and structural group-modules. Using it, process engineers are able not only to define some new connections but also to modify or delete the existing ones. As an outcome for using it, the redundant storage of relevant data which cover know-how principles and quality characteristics of the developed modules can be avoided. A predefined documentation structure, which is identically developed for each plant group- and structural group-
Computer-aided web-based application to modular plant design module, gives an overview to the stored documents and information. This structure is discussed on the example of the pump structural group-module and shown in Fig. 4 and 5. The left side of the Reuse-Atlas describes the level of visualization and allows saving of information regarding the 2D- and the 3D-module layouts with characteristic 2D- and 3D-views. The buttons: H-H (horizontal-horizontal) to H-V-1 (horizontal-vertical-1) shown in Fig. 4, correspond to the pump structural group-modules with different arrangements of the pipes on the pressure- and suction side. The Reuse-Atlas gives also an access to the modules designed with commercial CAD software. Therefore the available models of modules could be easily revised and reused. The number of documents, which can be stored in the 2D- and 3D-view is unlimited and depends on the complexity of the modules. The right side of the Reuse-Atlas describes the documentation of the modules. Here the know-how principles and dimensional characteristics of the given modules could be found, edited and created as Excel-, PDFor ASCII-files. The Reuse-Atlas gives process engineers a possibility of continual extension of the data base not only for documentation and models of the new modules but also for new sizes, arrangements and layouts within an existing module.
Fig. 4. 2D-view of the visualization level (left hand side) and dimensional characteristics of 2Dlayouts of the documentation level (right hand side) of the pump structural group-module
The table shown in Fig. 4 covers dimensional characteristics of modules which correspond with 2D-view of the visualization level. This table can be modified and extended with additional information regarding other sizes, arrangements or dimensional characteristics of 2D-layouts. The second possibility for visualization of the stored modules is shown in Fig. 5 (3D-view), where for each module and its arrangements, movies of 3D-models of modules can be stored and played via the web browser. It gives a better and faster possibility for evaluation of the stored modules by users. Since the know-how principles cannot be always expressed with figures, movies and tables, an editable verbal description of undertaken assumptions and decisions is also available and possible within a section “know-how principles”. This verbal description should favour the traceability of the undertaken assumptions and decisions. The know-how principles can be extended on new information for all sizes and arrangements of stored plant group- and structural group-module or only for the selected ones. The already stored information can be modified or, if it is necessary, deleted. In Fig. 5 (left hand side, “Add new notice” button) is shown, how some new information can be added to the existing ones. Fig. 5 (right hand side) shows an user interface used for the management of stored module documentation. This user interface makes it
Ł. Hady and G. Wozny possible to carry out a continual extension as well as maintenance of the Reuse-Atlas. Starting from the left side of this user interface, the module arrangements/ -layouts and sizes, stored drawings, movies and 3D-models of modules are available and displayed here.
Fig. 5. 3D-view of the visualization level and know-how principles of the documentation level (left hand side) as well as management of the module documentation (right hand side)
4. Conclusion and Acknowledgement The developed Reuse-Atlas favours the reusability of the equipment-modules and makes an internal technical know-how of a company or a division available to all employees involved in one project via Intranet or Internet. Due to easy and user friendly handling as well as extendable possibilities of this web-based application, planning works and computer-aided plant design with the Reuse-Atlas could be well supported and accelerated. Moreover, the stored modules and the know-how of modules can be reused every time when a new project is executed. As an outcome for using ReuseAtlas, repeatable design duties could be avoided, planning works are accelerated, the know-how and the quality of the modules are assured even though the experienced engineers are no longer involved in the project. Due to the fact, that efficient Engineering Reuse and the application of the predesigned modules depend on their arrangement and configuration, the Reuse-Atlas could support the optimal development and design of the equipment-module layouts. The authors acknowledge support from the Cluster of Excellence "Unifying Concepts in Catalysis" coordinated by the Berlin Institute of Technology and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
References Ł. Hady, W. Lueneburg, M. Dyląg, G. Wozny, 2007, Modular investment cost estimate of multipurpose chemical plant, Chemical and Process Engineering, 28 (1), 17-31 Ł. Hady, G. Wozny, 2009a, Know-how and quality assurance using a web based Reuse-Atlas, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 18, 761-766, DOI: 10.3303/CET0918124 Ł. Hady, M. Dyląg, G. Wozny, 2009b, Investment cost estimation and calculation of chemical plants with classical and modular approaches, Chemical and Process Engineering, 30 (2), 319-340 J. Kaiser, 2007, Study: Waste of millions by insufficient information systems in companies, PresseBox® [BoxID 110401, Software] W. Lueneburg, W. Zahn, 2003, Modulare Anlagentechnik, Chemie Ingenieur Technik, 75, 1022 M. Mueller, H. Thielert, G. Wozny, 2009, unpublished internal documentation
