Boil's Laws - The Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (P & ID) [Comic]

COMMENTS (5)
AIChE

Welcome to the second comic in the Boil's Laws comic strip series, brought to ChEnected by artist and chemical engineer-Rich Byrnes. It's entitled The Piping and Instrumentation Diagram. You can see a larger version or the first in the series here. Read about the inspiration behind Boils Laws here.

Have you ever made a mistake like Lee?

Also see: Boil's Laws: Orientation - Personal Protective Equipment

Comments

Submitted by RGCook (not verified) on Fri, 10/22/2010 - 17:25

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Too funny - comes at a great time for me, as I just completed Part 4 of my post on how to interpret those darn P&IDs! Kind of creepy that this is a comic and yet the P&ID the guy is holding is actually pretty complete. I suppose this is why we laugh at ourselves, that I even noticed that. Thanks Rich.

Submitted by Rich Byrnes (not verified) on Fri, 10/22/2010 - 20:58

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Robert, Your post are great, and very helpful. As you know the P&ID is the life blood for us in Engineering. I'll probably do more with this topic in the future. I agree the most humorous part is, first I bothered to draw-up a "pretty complete" P&ID within the comic strip, and secondly that you (and the audience) even notices, and appreciates this...... Probably won't see Boil's Laws in the Sunday Comics any time soon...... I'm glad you enjoyed it. Rich

Submitted by Greg in Houston (not verified) on Wed, 08/24/2011 - 16:22

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When I became a pup instrument engineer, I kept seeing a word on the P&IDs (never had seen one a year before) while making the instrument index, but didn't know the word. I finally decided to take my new boss' admonition 'feel free to ask questions' to heart. When I asked, of course he burst into laughter. I was shortly well known across the instrument team for asking what a 'flang' was (of course it was flange but I didn't pronounce it correctly). Twenty four years ago and I still remember it clearly. I also wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your outline of P&IDs. I moved into 'information management' about 15 years ago and so work a lot with non-engineers. I will refer some of them to your work here. Your light yet serious treatment makes it very palatable... to an engineer, at least :)

Submitted by Rich Byrnes (not verified) on Wed, 08/24/2011 - 19:58

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Greg, I'm happy you enjoyed the work. Quite frankly, after all my years in this business I'm still learning new things about P&IDs. They are a treasure trove of information when you know how to decode them. Hope the non-engineers also enjoy the humor. Rich

Submitted by Philippe (not verified) on Mon, 10/07/2013 - 07:31

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Which functional identifier would you use for a horn or a siren ? Thanks for your reply