(143c) Challenges Faced in Upgrade and Expansion Projects of Existing Chemical Facilities.

The ever-changing landscape of chemical industry especially post-COVID economic times, have created opportunities for production of diverse chemical products. Chemical industries are shifting their focus to creating new value-added product streams with a wide range of applications to improve product portfolio, facilitate long-term growth and enhance business viability. In order to realize these economics benefits, companies have to make strategic investments to expand production facilities. However, process design studies for such expansion projects pose a level of uncertainty – they are risky with unique challenges.

Such projects require more intense feasibility studies that pose such challenges which include, but are not limited to:

• Examination of existing infrastructure
• Regulatory compliance
• Complex PHA’s due to integration with existing processes
• Updates to existing data analytics models
• Close collaboration between the different business units

Such activities naturally tend to require more time and resources. This presentation will cover many such challenges, share best practices and tools that help minimize expenditure and prevent pitfalls during the process development and implementation stages of expansion projects.