As part of the study a baseline performance report is issued for the plant. This report includes discussion of:
- The material balance
- Detailed energy use calculation
- Furnace performance including coils
- Catalyst performance
- Detailed steam balance
- Turbine calculations and comparison to design efficiency
- Compressor performance and comparison to vendor curves
- Heat exchanger performance calculations
- Cooling water balance
- CO2 removal system performance
- Any instrumentation problems
- Flow schematics with stream assignments
- Detailed listing of all plant streams including composition, flow rate, and physical properties.
Using this information a computer model of the plant can be built. This model can then be used to simulate the plant in a wide variety of situations including specific projects for energy savings or debottlenecking, alternate feedstocks, the plant balance at a target production rate, impact of catalyst bed replacement, benefit of cooling tower retrofit, or any other situation desired. A number of retrofit designs have been adopted into ammonia, methanol, and hydrogen plants with a high degree of success.