ImmersaEngineering / Chemical engineering
Independent review of the calculations a facility is built on.
Whether the sizing holds, whether the balance closes, and whether the design basis will survive scrutiny. Calculations, datasheets, flowsheets and reports are reviewed independently of whoever produced them, and returned marked up with the reasoning attached.
What is reviewed
Seventeen areas, grouped by what they decide.
An engagement can take a single calculation or a full design package. Findings are ranked by consequence, and every assumption relied on is stated so a reader can test it.
The numbers themselves
The calculations that fix equipment size, duty and cost. These are where an early error is cheapest to catch and most expensive to discover late.
- Process sizing and rating calculations, independently checked — process duty, not mechanical or code design
- Mass and energy balances
- Hydraulic calculations: single-phase, two-phase, compressible and gravity flow
- Heat transfer and exchanger sizing and rating
- Separation and mass-transfer design — distillation, absorption, adsorption and phase-change duties
- Process simulation review and validation, steady-state and dynamic
- Relief scenario identification and screening
- Relief load determination for the governing case
- Relief valve and rupture disc sizing and selection — relief device datasheet review
- Relief inlet, outlet and disposal-system review
The documents that carry them
The design basis, flowsheets and datasheets a project is executed against. A defensible number in an ambiguous document still causes the wrong equipment to be bought.
- Equipment datasheets and technical specifications
- Flowsheet development and review — BFD, PFD, MFD, UFD
- Process design basis and design philosophy documents
- Utility system design — cooling water, steam, nitrogen, instrument air, vacuum
- Materials selection and process compatibility
What gets bought, and what gets reported
The point at which engineering meets procurement and the board. Vendor claims deserve the same scrutiny as in-house calculations.
- Technical bid evaluation and vendor document review
- Technical reports, calculation notes and engineering studies
How it is delivered
Scoped to the question, not to a headcount.
Chemical engineering review — peer review of the calculations, or a second opinion on one of them — is the most common way clients start, because it is the easiest to bound: a defined document set, a defined question, a defined deliverable.
A single calculation
One question answered in writing. A relief case, a line size, a reboiler duty, a vendor performance claim, or a figure that warrants verification before it is committed to.
The fastest and most-used route into the firm.
A full design package
Calculations, datasheets, flowsheets and specifications reviewed together, returned marked up with findings ranked by consequence and the reasoning attached.
Typically ahead of a design gate, a procurement decision or a contractor handover.
Typical findings
What a review of this kind turns up.
Illustrative and non-attributable. Each is invented; no engagement lies behind any of them.
- A relief case sized against the wrong governing scenario. External fire, not blocked outlet, set the required area — the specified orifice was one size short. Raised at 60% design, ahead of procurement.
- A column specified on a feed assay that excluded trace heavies.At the measured assay the bottoms ran hotter than design, pushing the reboiler past its duty and capping throughput before the unit reached nameplate.
- A two-phase line sized on a single-phase correlation.The flow regime at turndown was never checked. Predicted pressure drop was low by a factor that would have starved the downstream separator.
- A heat exchanger rated at clean conditions only.No fouling allowance appeared in the basis. The duty was achievable on day one and not at any point after the first campaign.
Invented for illustration. Nothing arising from a real engagement is reused, retold or cited as a credential.
See the deliverable
Read one before you commission one.
The specimen is a chemical engineering review: a solvent recovery column and its relief system, seventeen pages, six findings ranked by consequence. It is the same deliverable a calculation or design package review produces here.
It carries the assumptions relied on, a sensitivity table, the items examined and found sound alongside those that were not, the residual risk that remains after the recommended actions, and a passage setting out where the conclusion could be wrong. Every page is marked SPECIMEN; the facility, the client and the findings are invented.
Have a calculation or a package reviewed.
A short description of the problem, the document set or the decision is enough to confirm suitability, propose a structure and give an indicative cost. A mutual non-disclosure agreement is executed before technical detail is exchanged.
Discuss a requirement