Frazer-Nash can help you design new plant or modify, develop or understand faults in existing facilities, including for complex or high-assurance applications. We have a well-established process design capability, with extensive experience in delivering to clients across the full project lifecycle, particularly from concept development through to detailed design.
Optioneering: To set projects up for success, it is critical that credible options are assessed early on in a project before they are foreclosed. We can deploy agile multi-disciplinary teams to workshop potential solutions and develop credible process designs or intervention strategies efficiently. This is especially effective where there are unusual or onerous project requirements (such as a complex stakeholder landscape, significant safety challenges, high temperatures and pressures, unusual working fluids, limited space envelopes or challenging control requirements).
Equipment Sizing and Selection: We look to identify any required equipment as early as possible in the project lifecycle and perform the necessary sizing calculations to inform the plant layout. As the project matures, we optimise the design of components and the whole system, in line with the wider project maturity, to progressively de-risk the programme.
Supplier Engagement and Assessment: Where equipment is required, we engage with equipment suppliers to mitigate the risks associated with on-boarding suppliers late in the design process. We have good working relationships with a wide number of suppliers (many of whom are used to working on high assurance projects, such as in the nuclear industry) that we can use to obtain early quotes to de-risk plant layout and cost estimating.
Design Analysis, including System Performance Analysis: Our design projects are often supported by our wider extensive analysis capabilities. We can predict the performance of process systems using a range of tools, from hand calculations and whole-system modelling tools to detailed Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis if required. This enables us to develop quality designs for a wide range of systems (including those containing gases and liquids at a wide range of temperatures and pressures, multi-phase flows, challenging heat transfer demands and less common fluids like liquid metal coolants). Examples of common scenarios include:
- Performing overall flow performance analysis of process systems, either in support of design of new plant or modification or fault finding for existing plant, to ensure heat and mass balances are correct, as well as to understand pressures and flows throughout the system,
- Predicting the performance of significant components, using a risk-based approach to analysis fidelity that develops design confidence as the programme matures,
- Understanding the performance of the system in fault or accident scenarios.
Design Integration: As the design progresses, we integrate supplier equipment and our progressively developing substantiation work into the process, ensuring the interactions with plant control, impacts on thermal and flow behaviour and impacts on structural and civil design are assessed. This enables us to develop the design of complex facilities in high assurance industries combining COTS, MOTS and bespoke equipment from a range of suppliers, as well as more simple plant.