Centrifugal vs. positive-displacement pumps, reading a pump curve against a system curve to find the real operating point, NPSH and cavitation, and the compressor types used for gas-handling duties.
Nothing in a chemical plant moves on its own — pumps and compressors add the mechanical energy every process stream needs to overcome elevation, pressure, and friction. This module works through how a process engineer actually specifies rotating equipment: choosing between pump types for a given duty, finding the operating point where an installed pump will actually run, and understanding NPSH well enough to avoid cavitation, probably the single most common and most damaging pump problem in the field.
By the end of this module you should be able to explain why throttling a valve downstream of a centrifugal pump moves the operating point along the pump's existing curve rather than changing the pump's own performance, and why cavitation risk can actually peak above a pump's design flow rather than at it — a suction-side, resistances-based argument that echoes the fouling and film-coefficient reasoning from Module 9.