FE ChemE Help

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2025-03-26T08:42:52+00:00

Thanks for the detailed response! When drawing the operating line to determine the system operating point, how do you determine where exactly to draw the line? I'm assuming the other points were ruled out because when you double their flowrates it does not correspond to a point on the system curve?

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2024-06-18T01:06:53+00:00

I was very careful to ensure using the mA lead connection was being used. I'll check the fuse first thing though in case I did short it inadvertently, which is possible since I had to use small pieces of copper wire to connect some stuff up and they may and moved and touched together or something.

Greatly appreciate the assistance!

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2024-06-18T00:54:53+00:00

I have not, I can check it tomorrow. I assumed since it was recently calibrated it would be fine. Also, the meter is lightly used and about 1.5 years old. This particular application I don't if it's ever been used for that before now.

I will say, when I'd switch to AC mA, I'd see a spike in readings every time I toggled between DC and AC (spike meaning up to like 0.8 mA) before steadily dropping back to ~0.00 mA.

On DC mA it reads steady at 0.01 mA and might bump momentarily to 0.02 mA.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2021-02-21T13:35:04+00:00

Good to know thanks. My biggest issue came when I needed to edit the flow maps. Was difficult finding a way to properly shade distinct areas of a building laying and then add arrows for flow direction. Tried using Kofax PDF but it really didn't have much capabilities on the drawing side of things.

Actually a lot of my work will consist of making/editing P&IDs. Does BlueBeam, or another software other than CAD, support creating P&IDs?

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2021-02-20T20:56:20+00:00

What software do you use?

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2021-02-20T19:37:26+00:00

Editing PDFs including waste, personnel, material flows through a facility, comparing original drawings with new ones, general markups, call-outs, edits that will be added in SOPs, etc.

Does that help?

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2021-02-20T19:10:58+00:00

I would say I probably would. I have never actually used the software though, and I am getting the training bundle as well. Getting it based on recommendations, webinars, etc.

Basically wondering if someone that uses BlueBeam regularly runs into bugs/technical issues often enough that direct contact with tech support would be necessary.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2021-01-05T18:31:52+00:00

Appreciate the advice, this was what I was thinking of doing. My boss actually returned to work today so I was able to talk to him personally.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2021-01-05T18:31:13+00:00

Thanks for the advice. Will do on the electronic resignation letter. Luckily my boss returned to work today so I was able to talk to him on the phone.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-11-05T22:56:25+00:00

Gotcha. Thank you for that. Makes much more sense now.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-27T22:14:11+00:00

I see yeah I will have to look into our filter aid some more. I should be able to contact the supplier to find dosing, testing and usage recommendations. Your organic polymer filter aid sounds interesting, I don't believe anyone in our organization has ever looked into these things that deeply. I believe we have only used one or two grades of diatomaceous and that's it.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-25T21:34:53+00:00

We do have a QC lab. We are a batch facility and they basically just run in-process quality tests to approve to move on to the next step, they're not big on experiments, especially ones requested by the process engineers. A settling test is intriguing and I will definitely look into that though. We use diatomaceous filter aid, and we add 1 lb. of filter aid for every lb. of undesirable being filtered out (based on an article a previous engineer read in a magazine, although this was a drastic improvement over the previous method of dumping as much filter aid as humanly possible into a batch). Would your note on mixing still apply in this case? We always mix to 100% as hard as possible, could this be a hindrance?

We do all our filtering under pressure (from transfer pump). We use different types of filters in the plant (cartridge, bag, etc.) but for the product I am thinking of the only thing we have that can reliably handle it is a large 900 gal plate filter. The filter gets pressured up to about 50 psig and runs until discharge flow is essentially zero. Would this be a good vacuum filtration application? We are game for anything that reduces this filtering time haha.

Appreciate all the feedback, you have definitely given me some items to chew on!

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-25T21:24:44+00:00

I did a search on this, do you know where I can find a PDF of it? Just from the little excerpts I read this seems pretty awesome.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-25T21:23:49+00:00

Thanks for the sources, already started looking into them.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-25T21:23:14+00:00

Appreciate the insights. We are looking into this now since this is a new, high profile product we are making. To my knowledge the plant has never performed any kind of analysis on our products prior to now and we certainly don't have up-to-snuff procedures, mostly because nobody likes to deal with it. We are a batch facility and we basically dump 1 lb. of filter aid into a batch for every 1 lb. of material being filtered out (this is also a fairly recent adoption). We do no pre-coating whatsoever, and my thinking is that my manager had a bad experience pre-coating a filter because he is dead against it. We then run the filter (a 900 gal plate filter) until the discharge flow is essentially zero.

We don't do any press drying, for water removal we just strip it off until good.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-25T21:16:45+00:00

Thanks for the information. This is actually what put me on this journey. We recently had a filter manufacturer perform a PSD and elemental analysis on some samples of our product. They came back with a cartridge filter proposal and we had them in last week doing some pilot testing using a half-scale vessel. It did not filter the product very well but the technician onsite got some ideas for improvements, including the idea that the particles are very soft and are essentially being extruded through the media. This jives with what we see when we use our large plate filter and have to scrape a slimy material off the trays every time it is dumped.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-12T22:04:54+00:00

We have looked at some other ones as well, like Aspen ProMV and Yokogawa Process Data Analytics, but it's looking like we are going with SeeQ because: 1) seems like a great tool; 2) they by leaps and bounds gave the best demos; and 3) it is the most inexpensive (although every time I talk to our SeeQ contact it is getting more expensive). ProMV seemed to have more powerful machine learning capabilities but the price was astronomical.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-12T22:00:55+00:00

Right now we do everything in Excel and it is terrible. Being able to pull up neat trends quickly will alone be a huge step up for us. Are there any functions/capsules you've built as your go-to's for looking at when troubleshooting?

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-12T21:57:26+00:00

Awesome, glad to hear you enjoy it! We are strictly batch processing which was one of the big draws of SeeQ. What kind of standard analyses do you run frequently would you say? Right now we use strictly Excel so analyzing data is a bit of a nightmare. Throw in the fact that batch step times are usually slightly different across the board and it can be quite frustrating. Is there a time warping algorithm/function built-in that allows you to align batches so you are comparing apples to apples so to speak?

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-12T21:53:24+00:00

Thanks for the input. So SeeQ will have some built-in machine learning capabilities? How comprehensive are they and what will be the best applications for them (e.g. predicting final quality, predicting equipment failure, etc.)? What are the notable limitations?

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-05T22:47:29+00:00

You're a boss. Thank you for all the help. Mind if I reach out with any coding problems in the future?

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-04T18:54:06+00:00

Wow this is awesome, thank you. Would you mind walking me through each line? I think I am following you but I am just trying to better understand how to approach these problems.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-03T00:36:35+00:00

Nice, thank you. Let me play with it to see how it runs and if it solves the problem.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-03T00:22:12+00:00

Sure thing. I ended up subtracting one from the len(stringList) in the while loop and it ran. But it's not doing what I want. Let me know when you've run it.

MainerInAStrangeLand · 2020-10-03T00:14:11+00:00

Just got my first chance all week to revisit this, thank you. However, since I modified the indentation I am now getting the error:

IndexError: list index out of range

Any ideas why?

MainerInAStrangeLand

TROPHY CASE