Page 135 - Plant design and economics for chemical engineers

CHAPTER

COMPUTER-AIDED

DESIGN?

INTRODUCTION
Computing hardware and software are tools-of-the-trade for engineers. The
capabilities provided by computers for fast calculation, large storage, and logical
decisions plus the available technical and mathematical software permit engi-
neers to solve larger problems and to do it much more rapidly than ever before
possible. The engineers’ emphasis can therefore shift from problem solving to
planning, conceiving, interpreting, and implementing with the information made
available. Design is one of the engineering functions that has been impacted by
computers.
Chemical engineering stresses the processes for manufacturing chemicals
and chemical-based products. In this effort the emphasis of the chemical
engineer tends to be on the process rather than on the product, and that
emphasis is reflected in the contents of this book. The computer aids most
useful to chemical engineers in design are process- rather than product-
oriented. The more widely known CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/
computer-aided manufacturing) software is usually concerned with product-as-
object and is highly graphical and spatial. Chemical process computer-aided
design, on the other hand, is much less graphical. It is more concerned with the
performance of process units (such as the classical unit operations of chemical

TThis chapter was prepared by Ronald E. West, Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of
Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.

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