Key Takeaways:
- Equity’s Process Design Practices (PDPs) are a collection of SME-developed best practices covering 17 process design topics, providing in-house engineers with standardized guidelines for equipment sizing, fluid handling, heat integration, and safety system design across refining, petrochemical, and chemical industries.
- The PDPs are fully customizable and integrated within the broader Equity Engineering Practices (EEP) framework, which has grown over 25 years to serve more than 60 companies across 500 combined client years of use, now covering over 1,000 practices, 350 piping classes, and 600 standard drawings.
- By embedding proven process design methodologies into a structured, regularly reaffirmed set of internal practices, the PDPs help organizations reduce dependence on third-party contractors, improve
The Equity Engineering Practices® (EEPs) are a customizable set of Best Practices that are currently being used by more than 60 companies in a variety of process industries. The EEPs have served a significant portion of the US refining industry for 25 years, but have also grown to have a much more diverse clientele, serving hundreds of facilities worldwide in petrochemicals, chemicals, renewables, fertilizers, food processing, and other specialty process-related industries.
The EEPs help Owner/Users in these industries to manage their equipment and facilities over the entire life cycle of their equipment and infrastructure. The EEPs promote safety, help manage risk, improve reliability, capture corporate memory and help transfer knowledge. Equity has recently taken the EEPs to another level by adding a section of Process Design Practices (PDPs) to the collection. This article provides information on the development, content, and benefits of the PDP collection.Â
A Historic Look at the EEPs
When Equity went into business in the early 2000s, one of the first products we provided were Engineering Practices. As we near the celebration of our 25th anniversary as a company, the EEPs have grown from several refining clients to now over 60 EEP clients in the various process industries indicated above. With many of our early adopters of the EEPs with us for this 25-year journey, we can boast over 500 combined client years of EEP use.
Over these 25 years, the EEPs themselves have grown from an original collection of about 450 Practices and 200 Piping Classes to over 1000 Practices and almost 350 Piping Classes. In addition, the EEPs include over 600 Standard Drawings of such things as piping supports and instrumentation and electrical details. We have also introduced Midstream or Logistic Engineering Practices (LEPs) and Re-Use Practices (RUPs) to guide facilities repurposing existing equipment, piping, and infrastructure.
With the addition of the PDPs, the content covered in the basic EEP collection has grown from the original 15 main subject matter areas to 22 subject matter areas. The other six additional sections added in recent years cover Marine Facility Design and Maintenance, Solids Handling, Mechanical Integrity (MI) Programs, Special Emphasis MI Programs, Pipeline Facility Design, and Pipeline Facility Operation and Maintenance (see Figure 1).
While some of the original Practices were initially developed more than 20 years ago, all the EEPs have undergone continual review, reaffirmation, and revision by Equity’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to keep up with changes in the industries we support and in the equipment, piping, and infrastructure covered in the EEP collection. In fact, the EEPs are reaffirmed at a maximum of a five-year interval and the average “age” of the latest revision of the 1000+ documents is a little more than two years.  In addition, clients are able to customize their PDPs to retain their specific corporate knowledge.Â
Why Were the PDPs Developed?
For years, basic process design and engineering have leaned heavily on external standards and third-party expertise. The result is fragmented in-house knowledge, uneven designs, and a growing gap between in-house and contractor design experience. When in-house process design and engineering experience disappears and design decision-makers walk out the door of your organization, some of the design knowledge is lost and the gap in process knowledge in-house grows even bigger. The PDPs help fill this gap and transfer decades of engineering knowledge and process design and best practices within your company. The PDPs also help ensure consistency, continuity, and long-term in-house design control. They function as design references and training tools, supporting onboarding and upskilling of early-entry staff. The PDPs embed proven methodologies for equipment sizing, fluid handling, heat integration, safety systems, and key engineering decisions that shape reliable basic designs, resulting in retaining critical know-how, adding to your company’s self-sufficiency, enabling better and faster engineering judgements, and bringing design ownership back where it belongs.
Background on the PDPs
The initial PDP Table of Contents (TOC) and the types and level of information desired in the PDPs were developed through Equity discussions with a focus group of EEP clients. This group met several times over an approximately one-year period to refine the TOC and the general level of content desired. The development of the PDPs themselves was done all in-house by Equity SMEs.
The PDPs are not specific to one industry segment. They can be used by all process industries served by the basic EEP collection. Like other EEPs, the PDPs are linked where appropriate to other EEPs and/or other PDPs. They follow the same format and governance system as the EEPs and are customizable by clients with a “Customize” subscription (see Figure 4). Additionally, Equity SMEs will review, reaffirm, and revise the PDP collection on a scheduled basis or as needed when industry best practices change
The current PDPs consist of 17 best practices. The initial TOC for the PDPs is shown in Figure 2:
The content of each PDP consists of text, tables, figures, and in some cases equations which provide the necessary information for the process engineer without being overly theoretical or scientific. As an example of the type of content contained in a typical EP, the Fractionation PDP contains:
- General considerations for fractionation methods and concepts
- Key steps in tower design
- Available types of contacting devices (crossflow devices [trays], counter-current devices [packs])
- Contacting area definitions (bubble area, free area, waste area, etc.)
- Process definitions (jet flooding, ultimate capacity, etc.)
- Liquid handling limits (downcomer flood, weir flow, choking)
- Process considerations (tray efficiency, turndown, foaming, fouling)
- Hydraulic considerations (weeping, dumping, dry pressure drop, overall flood)
- Types of trays available (sieve, valve, jet, bubble cup, fixed valve, etc.)
- Counter-current devices (packing, grids, baffle sections, dual-flow trays)
- Tower design checklists (trays and packings)
In a few areas, Equity and the focus group determined new standalone PDPs were not needed, but rather process design content could be added to existing equipment design EEPs. This was done in the case of about a half-dozen PDP topics such as Pressure Relief Design and Emergency Depressuring and Sectionalizing, Control Valve Selection and Sizing, and Design of Injection Points.
As was announced at our recent Practices User Group, the PDPs are now commercially available. Several additional PDPs are in the works and nearing completion and will be provided to subscribers as they become ready. The additional PDPs are expected to cover Definitions of Design Temperature, Design Pressure and Toxicity Levels, Fouling Margins in Tubular Heat Exchanger Design, Fired Heater Selection and Application, Fired Heater Design Considerations, Burners, and other topics. Ultimately, like the other sections of the EEPs, we will continue to expand the PDPs as changes in our supported industries or clients’ needs warrant development.  Â
Benefits of the PDPs
The PDPs give process engineers the best practices needed to DEVELOP their own harmonized Engineering Packages. They provide tools that in-house engineers can use to TROUBLESHOOT or REVAMP their own facilities. Finally, the PDPs serve as customizable, Client-Specific set of design guidelines to REQUEST basic engineering from third-party companies, and a consistent set of practices to REVIEW and CONTROL the results of the third-party basic engineering packages.
Features and Benefits of the PDPs are summarized in Figure 3.
The Equity Knowledge Management Difference
In addition to training provided through the Equity Technical Institute (ETI), the EEPs are the main pillars of Equity’s corporate goal to transfer knowledge to our clients. The EEPs and our latest derivative, the PDPs, have been developed by Equity SMEs to capture many decades of combined industry knowledge and experience. For more information on the PDPs, please also refer to our February webinar: PDPs: Regaining, Strengthening and Transferring Process Design Intelligence.
If you are interested in learning more about any of our Engineering Practices products, including our base EEP collection, Equity’s Logistics (Midstream) Engineering Practices collection (LEPs), the Re-Use Practices (RUPs), and our EEP-specific closed AI tool, Q, please contact Susie Szymanski by submitting the form at the bottom of this article. Further details regarding subscription levels are provided in Figure 4 below.
Any questions can be submitted via the form below:
