Heat Exchanger PID

A Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID) is a schematic layout of a plant that shows the units that will be used, the pipes that will connect them, and the sensors and control valves. Storage tanks, surge tanks, pumps, heat exchangers, reactors, and distillation columns are common structures seen on a P&ID. The last three are the most common single-unit control issues in the chemical process industry.

The product stream is critical for monitoring the performance of a heat exchanger. Before proceeding to downstream process units, the product stream must usually be within a certain temperature range. The heat transfer can be calculated using the stream's output temperature. To achieve the desired product stream temperature, the steam is adjusted. Controlling the flow of hot steam is one approach to modify the product temperature. This flow-based control may take some time to establish, resulting in process oscillations.

These variances may or may not be acceptable depending on the method. Instead of monitoring the flow rate, the steam pressure might be monitored to achieve better temperature control. A change in pressure is much easier to track and directly correlates with a change in steam temperature. This is a good approach to keep process temperatures under control. Because pressure fluctuations occur as fouling occurs, pressure management also allows the physical condition of the piping to be monitored. This fouling inside a piece of equipment can be calculated using the pressure, flow rate, and temperature of heated steam.

​​Creating a P&ID in EdrawMax Online is pretty simple. The free P&ID maker has several features, like directly importing the data from the .csv file or creating one from scratch using free templates.