Process Engineering is a very wide field that encompasses a vast range of engineering and applied science professions. Many aspects of environmental engineering also rely on process engineering, for example pollution reduction facilities for water or gas and odour.
Dr Bruce Atkinson (FIEAust CPEng NER FAusIMM CP RPEQ) has more than 35 years of process engineering experience, mainly in the fields of:
Bruce is available as a specialist expert in these fields and for related activities such as due diligence and expert witness services.
Examples of specialist advice areas:
The role of a competent Process Engineer is to identify all relevant constituents, to understand their form in their natural occurrence, and to be able to design or critique a process that is intended to cater for the specific nuances.
Sampling plays a large part in all of these examples. In the case of water, very specific sampling and sample handling processes need to be observed to ensure that the reported water quality is truly relevant to the stream that is sampled. For example, underground water will typically have a significant concentration of carbon dioxide dissolved in the water. The minute that water is exposed to air, the CO2 will devolve and change the chemical composition of the water. Samples of water sources that contain organic substances may change character over time due to ongoing bacterial action after the sample is collected.
Raw minerals and coal are particularly difficult to sample representatively, and detailed Standard Methods have evolved over time in order to try to minimise the potential sampling errors. As an analogy, consider a ‘supreme pizza’ that has 13 pieces of olive on it, where the pizza itself has been cut into eight slices. We like to think that every piece of pizza is similar, but in reality, none of the eight slices are likely to be a ‘representative sample’ in terms of its ‘olive content’, and may typically have nought to four pieces of olive. Consider a platinum-bearing ore body. If each piece of olive represents a concentration of platinum in the ore body, what does that mean if the critical sample (‘one slice of pizza’) may vary from nought to four ‘concentrations’? The skills of competent personnel are required to determine whether or not the sampling program (typically conducted by drilling and analysing core samples) has been appropriately designed and executed, and the subsequent resource evaluation may be dramatically impacted if that sampling has not been undertaken appropriately.
In summary, Process Engineering is a very wide field, and specialists need to be employed within particular fields of expertise. Appropriate sampling and analysis methods are crucial to provide the process engineer with the type of information that he or she needs to fulfil his or her role. Having the correct information, the competent Process Engineer then needs to have the appropriate skill and experience to be able to understand the intricacies of how the specific raw material qualities will affect the intended process.