Advice/Tips for Staring out as a Process Engineer

[Michael G. Thomas]

Hi,

I just recently started a new job as a process engineer with a plant that manufactures polyimide foam (high grade insulation). I unfortunately did not acquire any internships or additional experience as a process engineer during my time in college so I'm not quite sure that I'm doing all I can, or what I'm supposed to be doing, to be the best process engineer I can be.

Lately, I have been reading everything that is available about the process at the plant even though there isn't much literature readily available, at the plant or online, as we are the only plant in the world that manufactures this material. I have also been examining the process and even shadowed some of the operators and lab tech so that I can get a better understanding of what they do on a day-to-day basis in hopes that this will help me better do my job.

Also, there isn't exactly another process engineer or chemical engineer here with years of experience under their belt that I can go to as a mentor. The plant manager is a civil engineer and he understands the process of course, but even he admits that he doesn't have the chemical background and doesn't understand the chemistry behind the process as well as he would like to. So I have felt that I have some what been learning on my own and trying to teach myself everything I can about this process that there isn't really much literature and information on to begin with.

As an engineer, I understand that my job is solve a well defined problem using what available resources I have in hopes to make the process more efficient and cost effective while also trying to reduce cost where ever possible. I only started almost a month ago, and I know I'm not going to learn everything right off the bat, but I can't help but feel like I'm lost in the sense that I don't feel like I'm doing all I can.

Does anyone have any tips or advice for a new process engineer starting out? Any help is much appreciated. I just want to be the best engineer I can be.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

If you stick to the idea the overall chemistry won't change (i.e., you will continue to manufacture polyimide foam), look at each step of the process. Can you improve the efficiency of the mixing tanks/sprayers to get a more efficient end-product (e.g., higher air content, leading to higher insulation value)? In mirror, can you reduce the amount of chemicals needed to achieve the same R-value? Are temps at the best value throughout the entire process? Can you use waste heat from one portion of the process to improve another portion earlier/later in the process?

Essentially, look at the big picture, choose a small piece of the puzzle and ask yourself what things could be improved (whether you know how yet or not). For example... more heat at stage 3 would be more efficient overall. While looking at stage 7 a month later, you note that there is an excess of therms, so it might make financial sense in the long run to capture said heat at stage 7 and pipe it back to stage 3 processing.

Keep detailed notes as you go.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[MFJewell]

As an engineer, I understand that my job is solve a well defined problem

Just want to clarify, your job is to define the problem first, then solve it. Typically, the problem will be extremely vague. Operations and/or maintenance will tell you about some issue, all sorts of information will be missing and half of what they tell you will be wrong. You need to be prepared to acquire and review your own data and spend time in the plant (which it sounds like you have been doing).

Keep operations and maintenance in mind when trying to make something more efficient. I have seen many process "improvements" that are great in the engineer's mind, but terrible when it comes to operating and maintaining the facility. Make sure you get input from interested parties before performing modifications. If you have their buy in on the front end, it will make your life a lot easier.

It sounds to me like you are doing some of the right things by spending time with guys in the field. Reviewing operational data, performance data, and equipment history (if any of this is available) would also be beneficial. Some of it may be out there on a company shared drive, you just haven't found it yet. I have worked at several places where people told me certain things didn't exist, but eventually, I found what I was looking for.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

When staring out, try to find something worth looking at.

 

[GregLocock]

"As an engineer, I understand that my job is solve a well defined problem using what available resources I have"

As an engineer who is about to retire I'd say that covers about half of the jobs I have to do. In the other I often need more resources, and I have to define the problem. They don't tell you that at university.

Anyway, you are making the right sort of noises. I strongly recommend you read The Goal by Goldratt. In the longer term see if they'll send you on a Six Sigma course. I'm a bit of a cynic about 6S but even if it is overhyped the toolbox is useful. If you can use a project at your work as part of it then you'll look like a superhero.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[IRstuff]

Not only define the problem, but to know there's even a problem to start with.

I've written about this particular case before, but we had a product that used a particular furnace process and a particularly unique process, and we muddled along for years with mediocre yields. Then, one day we were given a product that was almost completely dependent on that process, and our yields were completely abysmal. Corporate tiger teams, lots of experiments, etc., to no avail. I finally found a paper published by another company almost 15 years earlier that showed that furnace temperatures were absolutely critical, and we found that some low-level maintenance engineer decided that the maintenance cycle on the 1100ºC process was too much for him, so he changed the temperature to 1050ºC, and the rest was history.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[GregLocock]

Ah, Westheimer's Discovery. At a previous employer we had a nice little library in our section and the company had a librarian, who would actually chase stuff for us, in those pre internet days. She should have been paid a fortune in terms of what she saved us from doing in the lab.



Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[GregLocock]

Also go and talk to the line maintenance and repair people. I don't know if you log downtime on the line, that is always good for a bit of a think.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[buzzp]

Also, use spell check! staring/starting
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Good luck!

 

[rotw]

- Do you have an archive system (can also be electronic) with equipment process/equipment datasheets (pumps, compressors, heat exchangers...). Maybe you could read through this documentation in order to get more familiar with the systems and the processes (in the sense of how equipment has matured, how this was been originally specified, then eventually commented/amended, which standard /codes are recalled, added etc etc).
- Log report for maintenance, field engineering intervention are also a good source of information.

I am not a process guy...mechanical, so that's what I would do...

Some other remarks:

Lately, I have been reading everything that is available about the process at the plant even though there isn't much literature readily available, at the plant or online, as we are the only plant in the world that manufactures this material.

I am SURE there are plenty of other plants worldwide, all though maybe not a strict carbon copy of what you have at your facility, but still close enough or similar that it can provide resources and useful documentation to be used as reference. Just learn how dig into this (talk to your manager or colleagues, sales, suppliers... get a business card or two). The key word here is be PROACTIVE. Internet can provide large amount information, but in this case - if you don't talk to the people that will hint you / put you on the right track, you will just struggle for months doing a web search with meaningless results at the end. A process operator can be an incredible source of information and often they are more than happy to share information.

Also be specific. For example why does a certain equipment A in a process B need, say, a cold by pass? You maybe able to find in an other process that resembles to B, an equipment A' which happen to be quite close to A (as for duty, driver type, etc) and which is equipped with a cold by pass too...this will hint you.

Also, there isn't exactly another process engineer or chemical engineer here with years of experience under their belt that I can go to as a mentor. The plant manager is a civil engineer and he understands the process of course, but even he admits that he doesn't have the chemical background and doesn't understand the chemistry behind the process as well as he would like to.

Good try...but no. I think he/she knows much more than you assume. Learn how to live with the fact that a civil engineer, occasionally plant manager..., can teach you process.

As an engineer, I understand that my job is solve a well defined problem ...
Already flagged by the other posters.

Good luck!

 

[lacajun]

Few engineers are really equipped in school to start an engineering career. Most of us feel overwhelmed and sort of lost in the beginning. It's normal. You'll do OK and you're doing some of what you should by talking with operators and lab techs. Talking with the maintenance people is a good idea, too.

The plant has to have some records of the equipment used to make the insulation. In processes like that, it seems Process Flow Diagrams (PFDs) would be available as well as Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs). Equipment specs should be available and if not, get the information off the equipment and look them up. Some of those, i.e., tanks, pumps, etc., will be on the P&IDs. Study the PFDs and P&IDs to integrate that with what you learn from the operators and maintenance people. To me, those drawings are the roadmap to any plant.

If you have a control system in place, talk to the controls engineer or whoever does your instrumentation and process control engineering. They can be of great help to your learning curve. If you have a control system in place, compare its graphics and flow rates, pressures, temperatures, etc. with your P&IDs. The control system should be a reflection of your P&IDs. Any mismatches between your control system and P&IDs would be a good thing to investigate and correct. P&IDs should be maintained, with each change reflected on them.

Read log books, if available. Analyze the process data and do mass balance calculations to hopefully reflect what the equipment does. As was suggested, take a small part of the process first and build upon that.

Operators know the process problems. Maintenance people know how hard it is to keep the process running and often have insight into the process operators lack. I've found most maintenance people to be more technical than operators.

Hopefully the plant was engineered and you may be able to get information from the engineering firm responsible for the design. If not, it appears your product was a spinoff from NASA, who may have information on it.

Many of us were taught to design for ease of operation, ease of installation, and ease of maintenance. Those are good targets in learning how to do your job.

As you analyze the problems and think of solutions, think about Return On Investment as your mechanism to justify capital expenses. The problem costs you a certain amount of money through lost product, rework, downtime, excess raw material usage, etc. and your solution should be an economically feasible one to alleviate a lot of pain.

If you get into 6S, marry that with a good background in instrumentation and process control. To me, those are natural fits.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter

 

[epoisses_]

Your job is to use your knowledge make more money for the company and/or reduce risks.

Don't fall into the firefighting trap. Spend a good part of your time on improving things. Don't become a "mechanic-plus" or "operator-plus".

If you don't know what to improve, ask people for ideas, then rank them in order of benefits vs cost.
This may sound silly, but it gives you a flying start. I moved to a totally new part of the plant and my predecessor had left the company several weeks earlier. Nobody could tell me in precise terms "what was cooking". There was just an Access database of ideas from operators, mechanics and previous engineers. There were 63 ideas in total and it took me several months to estimate cost and benefits of each of them with reasonable accuracy.

One idea to increase the unit throughput turned out to crush all the others, with huge benefits and marginal cost. I decided to spend all of my time on that and nothing else, and once in place it made several millions/year benefits for the company.

Everyone in the plant always has suggestions for improvement. Many of them are probably valid. Hardly any of them are quantitative as described above. That's your job.

 

[epoisses_]

I can throw in a few other statements from my process engineering years:

1. Be glad it's complicated. If it were easy, they would have hired baboons to do the job.
2. Seemingly in contradiction with rule 1, my mum would have been able to do half of the job. But not the other half.
3. Check your data like a journalist. One datapoint is no datapoint. Two datapoints can mean anything. Three datapoints starts to look like something. Mind you it's not maths. You will always get a nasty cloud and up to you to draw a decent line or curve through it.
4. Fact = theory + observation. Never go with observations that have no decent theory behind them -- anecdotal evidence. Never go with a theory that is not confirmed by observations.
5. Don't fall in love with your own theory. Always be ready to hand it in for a better one.
6. Everyone will tell you your idea was tried before unsuccesfully. That was when all process conditions and the feed were different and it was not duly documented.
7. Don't mistrust lab analyses and instrument readings only when you don't like the number. Always mistrust them, to a reasonable extent.
8. Every additive injected somewhere creates at least one problem further (much further) downstream in the process.
9. Try to find back the manual! I'm not kidding. I was on an aromatics extraction unit and after several months stumbled upon the 1972 unit manual from the licensor, somewhere in a cabinet. It had all the answers I was looking for. These things get lost because people don't care to maintain files. If no manual, call the licensor when in trouble. There is a whole world outside the plant with experts willing to help.