The synthesis of a chemical process involves science, art, innovation, intuition, inspiration, experience, and common sense. Success also requires a lot of hard work and at times a little
luck. The old saying that “There are many ways to skin a cat” certainly applies to the development of a process flow sheet. We start with raw materials (fresh feed streams of reactants) and want to produce the desired product(s) while, at the same time, achieving a low capital investment, low operating costs, and safe nonpolluting operation. The design engineer needs to consider a multitude of issues and objectives that are often conflicting and frequently qualitative in nature.