CRITICAL REMARKS ON TOOLS FOR PROCESS REV ISION

The revision of production processes is based on darn, results and exp erience gained from a wide range of tools and instruments, It is there fore important to critically examine the limits and meaningfulness of these tools and instruments as they apply to process revision, Followi ng a description of a normal revision procedure, the limits and meanin gfulness of the information obtainable by modelling, experiment and fu ll-scale operation are discussed as a basis for process revision. Part icular emphasis is placed on fundamental operational information obtai ned from production plant. in addition, tools specially developed for process revision are presented and evaluated. The common theme of thes e tools is the ability to provide improved material balances of operat ing processes. Some of the better known process evaluation tools are a lso considered. The main feature of these tools is the abstraction of the task of individual unit operations as a starting point for possibl e process improvements.