Process Design and Economics

Course Description

Process Design and Economics is where the degree stops asking whether something can be built and starts asking whether it should be. The statewide description: investment requirements, cost estimates and profitability analyses of chemical processes for design and development.

⚠⚠ It is the course that most resembles the actual job. Practising process engineers spend far more time on capital estimates, payback periods and debottlenecking economics than on differential equations, and this is usually the first time a chemical engineering student is asked to defend a technical decision on financial grounds.

Carried by three Florida public institutions.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Estimate equipment and capital costs using published correlations, cost indices and scaling exponents.
• Estimate operating costs and construct a full cost of production.
• Evaluate profitability using payback period, net present value, discounted cash flow and rate of return.
• Apply the time value of money, depreciation and taxation to project evaluation.
• Carry out process optimisation, including sensitivity analysis on the economic assumptions.
• Synthesise and evaluate alternative process routes to the same product.
• Apply heat integration and pinch analysis to reduce utility cost.

Optional Outcomes

• Process simulation with costing modules (Aspen Economic Evaluation).
• Risk analysis and project uncertainty.
• Safety and environmental cost in project evaluation.
• Linear programming and formal optimisation methods.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Cost indices, scaling and capital cost estimation.
• Estimating fixed capital investment and working capital.
• Operating cost and cost of production.
• Time value of money; depreciation and taxes.
• Profitability measures and project selection.
• Optimisation and sensitivity analysis.
• Process synthesis and flowsheet alternatives.
• Heat integration and pinch analysis.

Optional Topics

• Simulation-based costing.
• Risk and uncertainty analysis.
• Environmental and safety economics.
• Linear and non-linear programming.

Resources & Tools

• Turton et al., Analysis, Synthesis and Design of Chemical Processes; Peters, Timmerhaus & West, Plant Design and Economics for Chemical Engineers — both standard, and both with the cost correlations the assignments need.
• Aspen Plus or HYSYS with the economic evaluation modules, where available.
• Spreadsheets, seriously — discounted cash flow work is spreadsheet work, and doing it cleanly is a marketable habit.

Career Pathways

Named on the Chemical Engineer career path. This is the course that points at the roles chemical engineers actually get promoted into — project engineering, process economics, technical management and consulting — and the vocabulary it teaches is what lets an engineer make a case to people who control budgets.

Special Information

⚠⚠ Named for the design at one college and for the economics at the other

⚠⚠ The titles are a real signal here, not branding. The statewide description is entirely economic — investment, cost estimates, profitability — which is UF’s reading. The FAMU-FSU college carries a fourth credit and calls it design, which suggests the flowsheet synthesis and equipment design work is inside this course rather than only in the sequel. Ask for the week-by-week schedule if you need to know how much design as against economics you will get.

Where the sequence goes next, and USF is different again

FAMU and Florida State continue into ECH4615. ⚠ USF does not carry ECH4604 at all, running its own design sequence as ECH4605 Product and Process Systems Engineering and ECH4615C Product and Process Design, with ECH4680C Product Development alongside. So three of the four Florida programmes take three different routes through design, and a transfer at this point in the degree is genuinely difficult. If you are considering one, raise it with both departments before the junior year, not during the senior one.

⚠⚠ Only four Florida institutions teach this, and two of them are one college

Chemical engineering is awarded by four Florida public institutions in three cities: the University of Florida (110 bachelor’s degrees a year), the University of South Florida (73), Florida State (27) and Florida A&M (4). Florida State and Florida A&M share the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, a single joint college in Tallahassee, which is why their records for this prefix are identical down to the title.

⚠⚠ So a carrier count in this prefix overstates how many independent programmes exist. A course carried by “FAMU and FSU” is one programme’s course, not two institutions agreeing. Read the hedging on this page accordingly, and treat anything stated about content as a description of a small number of specific curricula rather than a Florida-wide norm.

⚠ Neither UCF nor FIU awards a chemical engineering degree — the two largest universities in the state by enrolment. See the Chemical Engineer career path for what that means if you live in Orlando or Miami.

Accreditation and licensure

All four Florida programmes are accredited by ABET’s Engineering Accreditation Commission, which is what employers screen on and what carries the four-year route to Professional Engineer licensure under s. 471.013(1)(a), Florida Statutes. ⚠ Accreditation attaches to a named programme at a named institution, not to a course list — verify the specific programme in ABET’s own search.

Most chemical engineers never license: process plants fall under the industrial exemption. ⚠ The Florida exceptions are environmental and water engineering consulting, where work is sealed for public clients. Sit the FE examination in your final year regardless — the chemical FE is written for the curriculum you have just finished and will never be easier.