Norman P. Lieberman – författare

Methods for more planet-friendly process engineering Our earth is just one big, complex Process Facility with limited air, water, and mineral resources. It responds to a number of process variables—among them, humanity and the environmental effects of our carbon consumption. What can professionals in the Hydrocarbon Process Industry do to retard environmental degradation? Rather than looking to exotic technology for solutions, Process Engineering for a Small Planet details ready-at-hand methods that the process engineer can employ to help combat the environmental crisis.Drawing from the author's professional experience working with petroleum refineries petroleum refineries, petrochemical plants, and natural gas wells, this handbook explains how to operate and retrofit process facilities to: Reuse existing process equipmentSave energyReduce greenhouse gas emissionsExpand plant capacity without installing new equipmentReduce corrosion and equipment failuresCovering topics from expanding fractionator and compressor capacity and vacuum tower heater expansion to minimizing process water consumption and increasing centrifugal pump capacity, Process Engineering for a Small Planet offers big ideas for saving our small planet.

Vacuum systems are in wide spread use in the petrochemical plants, petroleum refineries and power generation plants. The existing texts on this subject are theoretical in nature and only deal with how the equipment functions when in good mechanical conditions, from the viewpoint of the equipment vendor. Also, the existing texts fail to consider the interaction of the vacuum system with the process equipment it serves and the variability of the motive steam conditions, change in cooling water temperature condenser fouling and erosion of the ejectors.Here are some of the many questions answered in this groundbreaking volume: Why does my first stage jet make a surging sound during hot weather?Why does the vacuum suddenly break?I've seen moisture condensing on the jet's body! What’s causing that?Why do I have to steam-out the drain legs from our condensers?Superheated steam is making our vacuum worse. Is this normal?How can I locate and measure air leaks?Reducing the steam pressure to my jets improves vacuum. But why?I can't pull the pre-condenser bundle. The shell side is fouling. What should I do?We're not getting our normal horsepower from our steam turbine. Could this be a jet problem?Raising the seal drum level improves vacuum! Is there an explanation for this?Our turbine exhaust steam pressure to our surface condenser has doubled in the last two years. What should we do?Restricting cooling water flow from our elevated condensers improves vacuum! Is this possible?What's a converging-diverging ejector all about?What's the difference between a barometric condenser and a surface condenser? Which is better?

This is not your average technical book!  Using a humorous and easy-to-understand approach to solving common process engineering problems, this unique volume is the go-to guide for any veteran or novice engineer in the plant, office, or classroom. Textbooks are often too theoretical to help the average process engineer solve everyday problems in the plant, and generic handbooks are often out of date and not comprehensive. This guide focuses on the most common problems that every engineer faces and how to solve them. The "characters" walk the reader through every problem and solution step-by-step, through dialogues that literally occur every day in process plants around the world.With over half a century of experience and many books, videos, and seminars to his credit, Norm Lieberman is well-known all over the world and has helped countless companies and engineers through issues with equipment, processes, and training. This is the first time that this knowledge has appeared in a format like this, quite unlike anything ever published before in books on process engineering. This is a must-have for any engineer working in process engineering.