Chemical and process engineering is the discipline that decides what a facility can actually do. Tundra Engineering’s process engineers work from Calgary, Alberta and Houston, Texas and own the process side of every project we deliver, from the first heat and material balance through commissioning and into operating support. On EPCM projects the same engineers who set the process basis stay on the file through procurement and startup, which is the main reason the design intent survives contact with the field.
What the discipline covers
Process engineering at Tundra starts with measurement and simulation rather than drafting. We build and validate heat and material balances against real operating data, size and rate equipment, run hydraulic and thermal checks, set control philosophies, and verify that relief and flare systems still hold under the cases the facility will actually see. Where an existing asset is involved, that work usually begins as process reviews and capacity studies, because the as-built condition of a producing facility is rarely what the drawings say it is.
Where it shows up on a project
Most of our facility work is process work wearing a different name. Gas processing plants live or die on the process basis. Gas treating and sweetening is a chemistry problem before it is an equipment problem, since solvent selection and circulation rate drive the whole train. Refrigeration and compression scope is set by the process conditions upstream of it. Oil batteries depend on separation and treating performance rather than tankage. And debottlenecking is process engineering in its purest form: finding the one constraint that is limiting the whole facility and proving it before anyone spends capital.
Process safety is part of the discipline, not a separate service
Throughput and safety are the same calculation viewed from two directions. Our process engineers sit in the HAZOP studies they support, because the person who set the operating envelope is the person who should be answering what happens when it is exceeded. The same applies to relief and flare verification, which feeds directly into flaring and venting reduction work.
Working alongside the other disciplines
Process sets the basis; the other disciplines execute against it. That means close coordination with electrical engineering on load lists and area classification, and with industrial control systems on the control philosophy, alarm rationalisation and safeguarding logic. Keeping those conversations inside one firm is the difference between a control narrative that matches the process and one that was written from a P&ID after the fact.
Typical deliverables
Process design basis and philosophy documents, heat and material balances, process flow diagrams, piping and instrumentation diagrams, equipment datasheets and duty specifications, line sizing and hydraulic calculations, relief and flare load summaries, control and safeguarding narratives, and operating envelope documentation for the operations group. Drawings and specifications are sealed by the engineer who did the work.
If you have a facility that will not make rate, a treating train that will not meet spec, or a capital project that needs a defensible process basis before it goes to AFE, that is the conversation to start. Get in touch with the Calgary or Houston office.