Development trends in chemical process equipment

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The development of modern society increasingly relies on highly mechanized, automated, and intelligent industries to generate wealth, and all of this is dependent on modern industrial equipment. The process industry is one of the key pillars of the modern national economy, responsible for the processing and manufacturing of products made from flowable materials; its development necessarily requires increasingly advanced process equipment. Process equipment is developing at a rapid pace. Chemical process equipment serves modern large-scale chemical industries as well as many related process industries; it is one of the three core technologies in terms of processes, equipment, and automatic control that are essential for modern large-scale chemical manufacturing. The production processes served by process equipment services are extremely diverse, typically including three main categories: process machinery, process equipment, and pressure vessels. With the rapid development of China’s petrochemical industry and its emergence as one of the key industries, the chemical process equipment sector has seen swift growth. Taking the petrochemical industry, one of the core components of modern large-scale chemical manufacturing, as an example, China’s petrochemical equipment has evolved from initially relying on imported complete sets to a situation where domestic production plays the main role with imports serving as a supplement; the degree of domestic production for large-scale oil refining equipment has now reached over 90%. The localization rate of large-scale ethylene production facilities in the millions of tons range, which best reflects a country’s **technological and economic strength, has also approached 70%. At present, only a small number of key pieces of equipment that cannot be designed and manufactured domestically for the time being, or those whose quality is not up to standard or whose specifications do not meet the required standards, are being imported. In the field of process machinery, reciprocating compressors now come in dozens of series such as L, D, DE, H, M, etc., with hundreds of different models available, meeting the needs of large synthetic ammonia plants in China with annual production capacities of 300,000 tons and beyond. As modern large-scale chemical industries move toward greater integration, process machinery is developing in the direction of larger size, higher precision, and longer lifespan. It features specialized design as well as customized design and manufacturing based on production process parameters, enabling it to operate under optimal design conditions. In the field of pressure vessels, the most representative development is that of high-pressure and ultra-high-pressure vessel technologies. Thanks to the development of various high-strength hydrogen-resistant steels and advanced technologies, high-pressure hydrogenation reactors have evolved from the cold-wall technology of the past to the large-scale hot-wall technology used today. Given that process equipment, especially large-scale petrochemical equipment, is mostly located in high-hazard environments, the safety assessment and life-extension technologies for pressure vessels are of great importance. In the field of process equipment, the various types of reaction equipment that are most diverse and representative have seen rapid development in China as well. However, the comprehensive design technologies for ammonia synthesis towers with a capacity of over 300,000 tons per year, large-scale oxychlorination fluidized bed reactors, ethylene oxide reactors, and continuous reforming moving bed reactors have not yet been fully mastered. The complete sets of equipment for large-scale fluidized-bed gasification plants still rely on technologies imported from Texaco and Shell, which represents a weak point. At present, tower reactors, which are widely used in process equipment, are entirely produced domestically. Carrying out chemical processes in a water-saving, energy-efficient, and pollution-free manner is the main driving force behind the development of petroleum, chemical processing, and equipment technologies in the new century. The technological development of petroleum and chemical equipment in the new century is characterized by: greater size of individual units, higher requirements for reliability, operation periods of over 3 years without maintenance, extensive use of customized designs for machines and pumps, and the need for efficient, highly precise, and compact unit operations for processes such as heat and mass transfer. New equipment is the cradle of new manufacturing processes, and the development of equipment technology must keep pace with the trends in these processes and engineering fields. At present, equipment manufacturing enterprises are participating in the development of new chemical processes more frequently and at an earlier stage. Their focus for future development will be to actively engage in the research and development of new technologies for petroleum and chemical processing, in order to introduce patented equipment with Chinese characteristics ； Independently develop various high-efficiency unit operation equipment to drive overall technological progress in petroleum and chemical equipment. The application of new materials in process equipment: The progress in technology for chemical process equipment is evident to all of us. In today’s academic community, many scholars are predicting who will be the driving force behind the next industrial revolution. Many experts are highly optimistic about new materials. Material technology, along with information technology, biotechnology, and advanced manufacturing technology, is regarded by many countries around the world as a high-tech field that will have a significant impact on human society in the present and for a long time to come. *In an exclusive interview with the American journal Science, it was also pointed out that many new interdisciplinary fields of research have the potential to have a significant impact on China’s future prosperity and development. Fields such as information science, materials science, life sciences, and research on resources and the environment are crucial for China’s sustainable development in the future. High-tech materials represent an independent field of technology; at the same time, they play a key role in guiding and supporting other technological fields, and are interdependent with them. Not only that, but high-tech materials are also key technologies common to modern industry and modern agriculture, which underpin today’s entire human civilization; at the same time, they constitute the most important material foundation for national defense capabilities. The integration of advances in materials science with other disciplines has undoubtedly become a focus of research and development in many fields today. **In the \"Announcement on Organizing and Implementing Special Projects for the Industrialization of High-Tech New Materials,\" the Planning Commission established a new definition for new materials, taking into account China’s actual conditions and the needs of future development. The definition of new materials refers to those that have emerged or are under development, and possess excellent properties and special functions that traditional materials do not have. Its scope mainly includes: electronic information, optoelectronics, and superconducting materials; biofunctional materials; energy materials and environmental protection materials; high-performance ceramic materials and new types of engineering plastics; powder, nano, and microporous materials, as well as highly pure metals and materials; surface technology and coating and film materials; composite materials; smart materials; new types of structural functional additives, and new structural materials with excellent properties. Most of these new materials are closely related to process industry equipment. The fundamental and pioneering nature of materials determines their impact on the manufacturing industry; research and development activities in materials have greatly driven scientific and technological progress in process machinery and related industries. The implementation of many high-tech process technologies in the process industry depends largely on advances in material technology; processes such as high-temperature pyrolysis, supercritical extraction, advanced power generation methods, and biomass energy are all closely related to the development of new structural materials. Meanwhile, the control of large-scale process equipment relies on the development of new functional materials. In recent years, the application of new materials and new processing techniques has received widespread attention in the development of process machinery products and the remanufacturing of process equipment. However, the rapid advancement of materials and the continuous evolution of processing and manufacturing technologies have led to a relatively delayed response on the part of the process equipment manufacturing industry to new materials. Therefore, exploring the application of new materials in process machinery, improving the level of such applications through fundamental research, and fundamentally changing the intellectual property landscape of China’s process machinery manufacturing industry is of great significance for the development of process machinery and related industrial fields. It is imperative to develop large-scale chemical equipment. The development of the petrochemical industry depends on two key aspects: processes and equipment. At present, the overall level of petrochemical equipment in our country is still relatively backward. Many large-scale chemical processing facilities rely largely on imports; the equipment needed for processing downstream products, as well as components for some major pieces of equipment, still require substantial imports. At the same time, the control of equipment and devices, as well as their online monitoring, are also relatively underdeveloped, **which hinders the rapid development of the national economy. Therefore, it is imperative to accelerate the improvement of the sophistication and efficiency of process equipment, and to achieve intelligent design, operation, control, and fault diagnosis for such equipment, as well as intelligent management and optimization. The process equipment and control engineering in the context of modernization is of great significance for enhancing the international competitiveness of the petrochemical processing industry, ensuring **safety and the development of related high-tech industries. It is also vital for the advancement of mechanical and electrical disciplines such as process equipment and control, equipment diagnosis engineering, and modern control engineering. The development trends in the field of contemporary petrochemical process equipment and control engineering aim to achieve high efficiency, high automation, safety and reliability in process equipment, as well as automatic monitoring of data parameters, online measurement and forecasting, and remote diagnosis and self-healing control for system failures. The main research areas include: studying the patterns of failure occurrence and the early signs that indicate faults, researching fault signal processing and feature identification, using various techniques such as vibration analysis, infrared spectroscopy, oil analysis, eddy current testing, insulation testing, ultrasound, acoustic emission, X-ray inspection, and noise analysis to diagnose and predict failures in industrial equipment; integrated systems for equipment condition monitoring, diagnosis, and control; active control systems; pressure vessel technology; equipment sealing technology; efficient molecular distillation technology; CAE for process machinery; polymer processing technology and equipment; as well as intelligent process monitoring and advanced control engineering. (end)