Rabu, 10 Oktober 2007

Me, According to Some References

My Name : Muhamad Nizar

Muhamad is taken from the name of Prophet Muhammad SAW. It is used as my first name in order to respect the Prophet, to show that I am a moslem man, and to hope that I can follow the Prophet’s way of life.

Nizar is derived from the arabic word Nazir which means “little” (www.2000-names.com). Not all experts agree on the meaning of this name. Others believe it means “small of stature” (www.babynamer.com). It also has the meaning “glance” (www.thinkbabynames.com).

My Blood Type B

I had an old email (date : 24 Jan 2006) from my friend which told me a research in Japan (year not mentioned) about a prediction of human characteristics based on blood type. I think some really match to me. According to the research, generally, I am a person who is easy going and free. I am also a person who really enjoys the life. Because I am easy going, it makes me become easy judging. I am not influenced easily by the pressure from surrounding. But I am easily to take a decision. I am a moody person. I am a person who tries to find a compensation when stress comes.

My Psycho-Test Result on 15 November 2001

It was a test when I was still student of Senior High School (SMU 1 Palembang) from Eksis Psychology Test Service Center to find out the right major for me in university. The test result showed that I had good analytical thinking on numerical test but I was not good enough in mechanical test. I had a good vision of future and a hard willing to work to get the best result. According to this test I was suggested to take engineering major in university.

Kamis, 04 Oktober 2007

Free, Demo, and Share wares for Che Engineering

I found some softwares that can be very useful for chemical engineering students, lecturer or the pro ones. Some are freewares, some are demos, some are sharewares. For information, the freeware is a software which is free to download without necessary to buy it. And it is fully working. Demo is a software which is free to download but with limited using period or trial (from 15 days to one month). Some features are disable. Shareware is a demo software but without limited using period. They are all very helpful for me when I was still student to make my college assignments easier, to make me understand the theories easier, and to make learning funnier.

Write down a name of the below sofware into the search box of a search engine (like Google) followed by the phrase “free download” and click the search button. Find the related site of the software and click the download link. Follow the instruction to install it on your PC. Enjoy the searching!! Hunting the softwares itself is a fun thing.

The Chemical Kinetics Simulator (CKS) provides a rapid, interactive method to simulate chemical reaction mechanisms. It only requires basic information: the reaction mechanism and kinetics, intial concentrations, reactions conditions and several simulator setup parameters. Once a simulation is complete, you may select the types of data plots to display. The choices are concentration, temperature, pressure, and volume vs time or concentration, pressure, and volume vs temperature. (Freeware)

ChemEng Economics Calculator was mainly made to do the basic method of estimating the Net Present Value of a process plant. This easy to use software also include few small calculators such as Estimation of Total Plat Cost - Overall Basis, Exponential Estimation, Updating Estimates, Exponential Cost Estimating Total Plant Cost from Individual Cost Sections. (Demo)

Est$Pro was developed to serve a specific purpose, rapid conceptual cost estimating of process plants and equipment. It will estimate process equipment prices and also estimate the cost of purchasing and installing bulk materials that user defines. (Demo)

Basic Acid Titration and Equilibria – BATE is a program for pH calculations in mixtures of acids and bases, weak and strong, with or without ionic strength. BATE is able to calculate pH of any mixture of acid and base faster then you will be copying the results from the screen. Whether you need to prepare a solution, or examples for lecture, or you want to check your homework – BATE is as handy as possible (Demo)

ACDLabs 10.0 contains of three programs i.e ChemsSketch, 3D viewer, and ChemBasic. ACD/ChemSketch is the powerful all-purpose chemical drawing and graphics package from ACD/Labs developed to help chemists quickly and easily draw molecules, reactions, and schematic diagrams, calculate chemical properties, and design professional reports and presentations. ACD/3D Viewer is a fast yet accurate 3D modeling and visualization program. It is fully integrated with ACD/ChemSketch, allowing you to draw 2D structures and quickly obtain their 3D representations in a striking 16 color display. ChemBasic is a simple, convenient and functionally rich programming language for the presentation and manipulation of molecular structure, related objects and all the content of ACD/Labs’ current and future programs. ChemBasic is founded on, and fully integrated with, ACD/Labs existing functionality. At the same time, ChemBasic has all the things a programming language should have: numeric and string variables, arrays, flow control and conditional operators, input/output procedures, etc. (Freeware for educational purpose only)

ChemLab comes with a range of pre-designed lab experiments for general chemistry at the high school and college level. Users can expand upon the original lab set using ChemLab's LabWizard development tools, thus allowing for curriculum specific lab simulation development by educators. These user designed simulations combine both text based instructions and the simulation into a single distributable file. (Shareware)

Discounted Cash Flow Analysis Calculator is a capital budgeting and investment analysis tools which simultaneously evaluates 14 cash flow series comparing 5 different discount rates (or costs of capital) per series. For each series (or capital budgeting project) Discounted Cash Flow Analysis Calculator provides the following results: Initial Investment, Smallest Cash Flow, Largest Cash Flow, Cash Flow Range, Average Cash Flow, Number of Cash Flows, Undiscounted Sum of Cash Flows, Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and Undiscounted Payback Period. (Demo)

PackCol performs hydraulic design for new packed columns or rating calculations for existing columns and towers. The design basis can be approach to flood, maximum capacity or pressure drop. Includes a database of packing types, but custom data can be used. The Eckert and Robbins correlations are included to cover the full flowrate range. Results can be printed in tabular form, and plotted as a Generalised Pressure Drop Correlation diagram or as an Operating Diagram. Detailed manual and tutorial included in Word v6 format. (Demo)

Enjoy the softwares!! If you are interested, why don’t you contact the vendor and buy the original ones. I am not representation of the vendors.

Rabu, 03 Oktober 2007

How I made my bachelor's final report

"Preliminary Design of Hydrogen Plant Using Low Pressure Gasification of Rubber Wood"


When it came to me a time to make my bachelor’s final report (a preliminary design of a chemical plant), I had a will in my mind that I wanted to write something new. I wanted to design a new plant that had not been designed yet by my previous seniors.

Therefore, I went to a net shop almost everyday to get an idea of my plant design. I was interested in biomass technology at that time, so I always tried to search a process involving biomass. With search engine Google, I used keywords like “biomass processing chemical plant process flow diagram”. Finally, I got an excellent file (in pdf) from National Renewable Energy Laboratory, United States. It was a report file of a detailed design and economics of biomass to hydrogen production utilizing the battelle columbus laboratory indirectly heated gasifier. The files contained complete process flow diagrams divided into some plant areas, complete mass and energy streams tables, specification table for every equipment in the plant, and the economic analyses. The plant used yellow poplar as the biomass sources. It is a kind of American wood.


I was so excited and confident with this file. I decided to design such plant in Indonesia with different kind of wood. Soon, I met my advisor to discuss about it. He agreed with my title. He suggested me to use rubber wood because the source was abundant especially in South Sumatra Province.


The file I had did not contained the detailed calculation certainly, only the numbers showed. So I had to find out how they got the numbers. I used HYSYS to simulate their plant untill I got the equal results, the equal numbers, as they. It took about two weeks to deal with it. From here, I modified my simulation by changing the raw material of the plant, from yellow poplar to rubber wood. The next step was I had to calculate all the results from the HYSYS simulation manually because all calculations had to be described in my final report. This step took the time mostly because I stopped to calculate untill my calculations were equal to HYSYS’s.


The most difficult problem in my final report was to design the equipments. Some could be done by HYSYS but most could not. However I had to write down the detailed calculations in my report. More and more study of literatures were conducted by going to libraries and/or to net shop. It was a stressing moment when it was hard to find how to design an equipment correctly. After all the equipments were designed, the next step was to estimate its cost and make the economic analyses of the plant project. Thanks to Google, I found a very good file from National Energy Technology Laboratory, USA, which reported some important chemical equipments cost estimation. This file really helped me. For the economic analyses it was not too difficult because there are many references for it.


After all the things that needed detailed calculations were done (all were put in appendixes), the next step was arranging words. I had to make a good report with the format Introduction (chapter 1), Plant Overview (chapter 2), Plant Location and Layout (chapter 3), Mass and Energy Balances Summary (chapter 4), Plant Utility (chapter 5), Equipment Specifications Summary (chapter 6), Structure of Organization (chapter 7), Economic Analyses (chapter 8), and Conclusion (chapter 9). Followed by nomenclature, references, and appendixes.


The process flow diagram of the NREL plant was so long and complex. So I made it shorter by eliminating some equipments. It influenced the amount of the Hydrogen produced. Here are the processes I had modified :

· The rubber wood was crushed to chips then dried in Rotary Drier

· The chips was gasified in the Indirectly Heated Fluidized Bed Gasifier

· The syngas from the gasifier was cleaned by cylone and reformed in reformer reactor (fluidized bed)

· Gas from the reformer was cooled with some Heat Exchangers continued by scrubbing in Scrubber.

· Gas from the scrubber was then compressed to 24.7 atm in 4 step compressions

· The compressed gas was sent to the Pressure Swing Adsorber to separate Hydrogen from other gases


I learned from my experiences in finishing this report that designing a chemical plant is not an easy thing. It needs specialists from various diciplines because it is a complex problem. A chemical engineering student can only make a conceptual design not a detailed design of the plant. I believe a proverb that says “ experience is the best teacher”.


Below is a link to download my complete bachelor’s final report (in zip file). I hope it can be useful for many people especially for chemical engineering students who want to make a plant design.

http://getfilehosting.com/file/125/-s-H2_Plant.zip.html

Senin, 01 Oktober 2007

WHAT CHEMICAL ENGINEERS DO FOR A LIVING?

Case

A Chemist in a company’s research and development division has discovered that if he mixes 2 reactants in a certain proportion at an elevated temperature, he obtains a product more valuable than both reactants. The company contemplates manufacturing the product using a process based on this reaction.

What Chemical Engineers can do about this is making analyses and decisions on some of these engineering problems.

1. How to design the reactor where the reaction can be carried out in safely?

2. Where should be the reactants be obtained? Buy them or make them?

3. Should the reactor effluent which contains the products and unconsumed reactants be sold as is, or should the product be separated from the reactants and the latter be sent back to the reactor? How to design the process?

4. Should additional laboratory studies be conducted? What studies?

5. What can possibly go wrong with the process and what can be done if and when it does really happened?

6. Are there waste products that result from the process? Are they potentially harmful if released untreated into the environment? If so, how to treat them?

7. How much does all of this cost? How much can the product be sold for and to whom? How much money will the process net each year? Is it worthwhile? If so, where should the plant be built?

8. Once the plant has been bulit, what procedures should be followed for “start up”?

9. Six months after start up, it happens that the product is not coming out the way it did in the laboratory. What is going wrong?

10. When the process finally starts working perfectly and the next day an order comes down to change the product specification, how can it be done without redesigning the entire process? Why didn’t they think of this before they built the plant?

Source : Felder, Richard M. and Rousseau, Ronald W. ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF CHEMICAL PROCESSES, Second Edition.

Journey From Elementary to University


I was born and I grew up in Palembang City, South Sumatra Province, Indonesia Country. I finished my elementary school, my junior and senior high school, and my college, all there in beloved-city Palembang. Now on, I live in a small developing city in West Java, that is Depok.

I studied in two different Elementary Schools. I studied in SD Kartika 2 Palembang untill 3rd class and continued the next classes in SD N 5 Palembang (now its number is changed, I forget what). My elementary school period was started in 1990 and ended in 1996.

My junior high school period (1996 – 1999) was in SLTP N 2 Palembang, located right in front of SD N 5 Palembang. There was nothing special happened in these years except that I found my first love here. A beautiful girl whose name means “Apple”. We are still in contact now as friends.

The best period of my formal education was my senior high school, from 1999 to 2002 in SMU N 1 Palembang. Here I found the meaning of friends. I did not only spend my time studying here but also enjoying the beauty of friendship. I was an active student. I was busy in school organizations. I was the vice-chief of ROHIS (School Islamic Organization) and the chief of Division I (Religion) of OSIS (School’s Internal Student-Organization). I arranged the Ramadhan Islamic Short Course (Pesantren Kilat) in 2000. It was a school-routine activity on every Ramadhan or fasting month which took 7 days in the week two of Ramadhan. I was busy also as a player (midfielder position) in football club, one of the school extra-curricular. In last October 2000, my friends and I (Trio) were delegated to join an English Quiz Contest held by English Forum For Economic Students of Sriwijaya University. We won the third place. The fun thing joining this contest was we were able to beat college student in the quarter-final. And in Mid-June 2001, I was delegated again with different friends (still in trio) to join another English Quiz Contest which, this time only for SMU Students, was held by Faculty of Teacher Training and Education of PGRI University Palembang. Again we were the third winner. What I was happy about joining this contest was we were able to ‘knock out’ the teams from favorite school in the first round. All activities in organization were ended when I had been already in the 3rd class (science class) preparing for National University Selection Test or in Indonesia Seleksi Penerimaan Mahasiswa Baru (SPMB) 2002.

I was accepted in Sriwijaya University (UNSRI), Department of Chemical Engineering which was my second choice in SPMB 2002. This university has two campuses. One is in Bukit Besar Palembang and another one is in Indralaya Ogan Ilir. The campus in Bukit Besar is for Non Reguler or Extension Students (S1 Non-SPMB students) while the campus in Indralaya is for Reguler Students (S1 SPMB Students). I lived in Palembang. Palembang and Indralaya is +/- 32-Km-distance separated. It takes about 45 minutes to go on Campus Bus from Palembang to Indralaya. So I, and other UNSRI reguler students who live in Palembang, will spent about 90 minutes go-and-back on Campus Bus every day except Saturday and Sunday. It was a tiring moment for me in the first time I become UNSRI students. But I got accustomed to this daily routine in one month.

I am a kind of active person. Therefore, in the first semester of my college, I was quite active in the Chemical Engineering Student Association (in Bahasa : Ikatan Mahasiswa Teknik Kimia). In this first semester, I followed the ChE Student Congress to revise the association’s rules and principles and to select the next association head for period 2002-2003. I was involved as the staff of section sport in this period with one of the programs was IMATEK Soccer League. In the next period 2003-2004, I was in charge of section education. One of my programs was to socialize my department to high schools (public and private) in Palembang and Indralaya. For the next two periods, I was not involved anymore in the association for some reasons.

From September 2003 to September 2005, I worked as the lecturer assistant in the Organic Chemistry Laboratory. My duties, some to mention, were to give students explanation about the experiments; To guide students in conducting experiments; To check the student's report of the experiment done a week before. While from February 2006 to February 2007, I was the lecturer assistant in the Applied Chemical Engineering Laboratory with duties not much more different from the above onces I had mentioned.

To be graduated from my department in Sriwijaya University, I had to pass three obligatory steps. First was internship in a chemical industry. Second was conducting a research on related field. And the third was the final report. For this report, a student had to make preliminary-design of a new chemical plant from making the process flow diagram logically, mass balances, heat balances, equipment specifications, organization structure, economic analyses, and other related things. All calculations had to be attached to the report. It was a hard job to do moreover if it was done alone as I did, but it was a very-good job for a ChE student because almost all chemical engineering knowledge are applied to this job.

I did my internship from September 5 to October 5, 2005 in PT. PERTAMINA Refinery Unit (in Bahasa : Unit Pengolahan) II, Dumai, Riau, with report title : “Evaluation of Pre-Heater Train B Performance in Crude Distillation Unit”. My research was conducted from February 10 to April 20, 2006, with report title : “Producing Bioethanol from Kulim Sawdust Using Hydrolization-Fermentation Method”. For my final report, I composed it for six months from November 2006 to April 2007. It was a hard months in my life. Everyday was dedicated for finishing this report. And the struggle was paid with the report title : “Preliminary Design of Hydrogen Plant Using Low Pressure Gasification of Rubber Wood”. Finally, I graduated from Chemical Engineering Department of Sriwijaya University on May 10, 2007 and the ceremony of graduation was on June 28, 2007. Thanks God!!