AIChE CCPS SBE CEI IfS Giving Academy Engage Where chemical engineers mix it up. Home › Interpreting Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams Interpreting Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams in the seriesHow to Interpret Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams With a Bit of Smoke, a Few Mirrors and a Degree in Hieroglyphics, Anyone Can Learn to Read a P&ID. This is Part 1 of a five-part series. Part 1 - Introduction
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1.Interpreting Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams _ ChEnected
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8/17/2019 1.Interpreting Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams _ ChEnected
engineer. I guess that's earned me my vice, VP of Engineering and Technology
Development to be precise. Hi there. I'm Bob Cook and I'm glad to have you along for my
premier entry here on ChEnected.com where we explore the interpretation of Piping and
Instrumentation Diagrams, or P&IDs for those in the know. This is a topic that can
benefit process, project and design engineers, business developers, operators, safety,
maintenance and even management. Wow, that a lot of folks! However, consider this - allof the members listed above will either come across P&IDs intermittently or have to work
with them as a core aspect of their job. And if I still have your attention then, yes, you too
should have a solid understanding of how to read them! Hey you hiding the back...don't be
bashful. You say that you are two, three...five years out of school and still not sure
you really have a good handle on P&IDs? You're not alone. Having worked for many
companies and provided services to a variety of industries over the years, I find it curious
how P&IDs are often poorly understood by those who should know them better. In some
cases, they exude this aura of intimidating, complex documents that only ChE geeks (and
the like) really know how to read. I believe this is simply due to a dearth of formal training.Folks are just expected to pick it up "on the fly". Given the variability in career direction
our backgrounds in the best engineering field afford us, this works well for some but
leaves others playing catch-up later on. So even experienced engineers and operators may
one day discover their lack of knowledge on the topic puts them at a disadvantage. So let's
just put a stop to all that by taking P&IDs apart in this multi-part series.
Regardless of experience level, you will find many of the symbols are obvious. Others need
a bit more explanation. In much the same way ancient Egyptians used hieroglyphics
thousands of years ago, we process folks (in conjunction with our peers in the electrical,
controls and other departments) just come up with our own set of symbols to represent the
various equipment, devices and control concepts that go into our plants. When you look at
it that way, one could argue that not much has changed in a few thousand years. I supposethat's true. Hey, if it isn't broke, why fix it? Enough of my bantering, let's get started already.