Unit operations and Unit Processes

Importance of Unit Operations.

In chemical engineering and other related fields like biochemical engineering, unit operation plays an important role.

The unit operation involves physical changes like separation, evaporation, filtration, crystallization etc.

In chemical engineer academics or even further studies, the unit operation can be divided into five classes.

1.Fluid flow operations.
2.Heat transfer operations.
3.mass transfer operation.
4.Thermodynamics.
5.Mechanical operations.

A chemical engineer has to do with the industrial process in which raw material is changed to a useful product.

Chemical engineering has to design and develop the process and engineer out the problem coming in there ways.

During this process, the chemical engineer has to keep the following things in mind and also consider it

 1.  Correct raw material regarding the      developed process
 2. Plants efficiency regarding the equipment that is considered.
 3. Safety.
 4. Market requirements that products have to meet.
 5. Most important, Economical point of view.

  Application of Unit Operations.

Unit operations are applicable to many physical processes like, let take an example.
When I was in 3rd year of engineering, I was supposed to do a summer internship which was compulsory for every student.
I had my internship in Gujarat Alkalies and Chemical limited located in Vadodara, Ranoli. There, for the first time in my life, I had the experience of the chemical industry which was great. Because it feels great when you are studying something and you get the chance of seeing and understand for real.

Mainly GACL, manufactures Caustic soda NaOH from Salt NaC.

Its process consists of the following sequence of unit operation such as,

1.Transportation of solid and liquid raw materials

2. Evaporation

3.Crystallization 

4.Filtration

5.Electrolysis

6.Drying

7.Chemical treatment.

8.Separation or Screening.

This was quite simple and easy to understand while on other hand processes like cracking of Petroleum with or without a catalyst is a complex and critical process.

The main aim of the chemical engineer may be to form the reaction zone by controlling or regulating the flow of material or energy.

Reaction zone means material had already reacted and need physical treatment or is about to initiate the reaction.

A balanced discussion of each operation requires the knowledge of theory and equipment consideration together. It is all based on science and experience.

 What is Unit Process

Unit Processes is a step or series of step to bring about chemical changes. They may include the  breaking of bonds and the formation of new bonds with existing or another element about releasing or absorbing energy 

Some of the famous chemical reaction are Nitrogination, Oxidation, reduction,   sulfonation etc

Unit Process includes all treatment methods which are useful for removal of impurities or containers which are brought about by chemical or biological reaction.

Role of a  chemical engineer.

Here the main role of the chemical engineer initially is to generate the desired products on a laboratory scale or pilots scale (like an experiment) and once the product is made through some specific route. Taking route in mind some modification, if possible are made to make process convenient and economical.

After that, the next step would be to scale up the pilot-scale plant to commercial industrial or large scale.

Here, the chemical engineer has to make assumptions and has to decide what type of equipment would be feasible as there may be lots of equipment but based on process condition and requirement, some specific equipment is selected or design

Thank you for today, will meet you another blog with some new information about chemical engineering.

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