WHAT IS PROCESS TECHNOLOGY?
HECK WHAT DOES THE WORD “PROCESS” MEAN?

There are many types of career disciplines found in process technology industries.

Regardless of their job title, every employee working in an industrial process plant has a job description that supports continuously converting raw materials into products that are more valued and desired by customers.

The raw materials are often called feedstocks. The end result is that the products can be sold for more money. And I mean enough money to employ all the people at the facility as well as cover the cost of the energy needed to convert the feedstocks into desired products…. 

AND bankroll far too many administration personnel that wear fancy clothes to work at corporate headquarters several thousand miles away from the plant!

Industrial process plants add value or upgrade raw materials into more widely usable products.

 

What’s the Difference between Manufacturing and Processing?

Manufacturing industries….like Ford Motor Company churning out F150 light duty trucks…are different than process industries. Manufacturing companies assemble parts together and make the same product in predictable units.

Take note that the next time you make a peanut butter sandwich out of bread and peanut butter, you added value to the raw materials (the bread and peanut butter) and made a product that six-year olds would consider to be more valuable. Right on! Your kitchen is a mini-manufacturing plant that assembles raw materials into products that are desired by hungry people.

 

Common Features and Goals of Every Process Industry 

Unlike manufacturing plants, processing plants convert a feedstock into desired products through a series of continuous integrated steps, or processes. These processes are designed to combine advances in technology with knowledge about the physical, chemical, and/or biochemical properties of the feedstock to make intermediate products or final products.

The technologies used in the processing steps are processing technologies. Here are a few examples of processing technologies:

• • Physically separating a feedstock into gas and liquid  components.

• • Physically separating a feedstock into several intermediate products.

• • Chemically changing the feedstock by sending it into a reactor.

• • Adding or removing energy from the process to continue a chemical reaction.

• • Using an automatic instrument control scheme to continue a chemical reaction.

• • Separating the very flammable components out of a product so that the product will be safer to move.

A few examples of industries that use process technologies are:

• • The exploration and production of natural resources (for example crude oil or coal).

• • The generation and distribution of utilities like clean water or electricity.

• • Hydrocarbon-based fuel refining and petrochemical refining.

• • Natural gas conversion into hydrogen gas, or fertilizer, or light crude oil via Gas to Liquids technology.

• • Biofuels and renewable energy processes.

• • Pharmaceutical production.

• • Many food industries….like making batches of beer!

Each process industry has the following goals:

• • Safe operation and maintenance of the expensive process hardware so that they can continuously perform their processing step.

• • Making sure that there is enough feedstock and energy to continuously convert the raw material into marketable products.

• • Making sure that the finished products are purchased and transported out of the facility in time to make room for more finished products.

• • In the United States, each processing facility needs to be operated in a manner that limits environmental degradation to permitted levels.

 

Take Home Message: Industrial process technologies continuously upgrade raw material feedstocks into more valuable products. There are several processing steps and process technologies used in the conversion of feedstocks into products. There are a variety of jobs and career types that work together to continuously make the marketable products.

 

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