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material-balance-calculator skill

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This skill performs material and energy balance calculations to support process design, optimization, and troubleshooting.

npx playbooks add skill a5c-ai/babysitter --skill material-balance-calculator

Review the files below or copy the command above to add this skill to your agents.

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SKILL.md

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---
name: material-balance-calculator
description: Material and energy balance calculation skill for process design and troubleshooting
allowed-tools:
  - Read
  - Write
  - Glob
  - Grep
  - Edit
  - Bash
metadata:
  specialization: chemical-engineering
  domain: science
  category: Process Design
  skill-id: CE-SK-030
---

# Material Balance Calculator Skill

## Purpose

The Material Balance Calculator Skill performs material and energy balance calculations for process design, optimization, and troubleshooting applications.

## Capabilities

- Steady-state material balances
- Component balances
- Energy balances
- Recycle stream calculations
- Purge stream optimization
- Data reconciliation
- Gross error detection
- Balance closure verification
- Heat integration calculations

## Usage Guidelines

### When to Use
- Developing process designs
- Troubleshooting processes
- Optimizing operations
- Reconciling plant data

### Prerequisites
- Stream compositions known
- Flow rates measured/estimated
- Reaction stoichiometry defined
- Physical properties available

### Best Practices
- Close balances properly
- Identify measurement errors
- Document assumptions
- Validate against plant data

## Process Integration

This skill integrates with:
- Process Flow Diagram Development
- Process Simulation Model Development
- Performance Testing and Validation

## Configuration

```yaml
material-balance-calculator:
  balance-types:
    - overall
    - component
    - element
  methods:
    - sequential-modular
    - equation-oriented
    - data-reconciliation
```

## Output Artifacts

- Material balance tables
- Energy balance tables
- Stream summaries
- Reconciliation reports
- Heat duty calculations

Overview

This skill performs steady-state material and energy balance calculations to support process design, optimization, and troubleshooting. It produces reconciled stream summaries, balance closure checks, and heat duty estimates for plant and pilot-scale systems. The skill targets chemical process engineers needing fast, auditable balances and reconciliation reports.

How this skill works

The skill accepts stream flow rates, compositions, reaction stoichiometry, and basic physical properties, then runs overall, component, and element balances. It supports sequential-modular, equation-oriented, and data-reconciliation methods, detects gross measurement errors, and closes balances using reconciliation routines. Outputs include material and energy balance tables, reconciliation reports, and heat integration estimates.

When to use it

Sizing equipment and verifying process mass/energy requirements during design
Troubleshooting discrepancies between measured and expected plant performance
Reconciling plant data to improve operational targets and KPI accuracy
Optimizing recycle and purge flows to maximize yield or reduce losses
Preparing validation datasets for process simulation or performance tests

Best practices

Provide measured stream compositions and flow rates with uncertainty estimates
Document all assumptions, basis, and units before running balances
Use data reconciliation to identify and correct gross measurement errors
Close overall and component balances separately, then reconcile energy balances
Validate calculated results against independent plant tests or simulation models

Example use cases

Calculate overall and component balances for a reactor with recycle and purge streams
Reconcile noisy plant flow and composition measurements and flag gross errors
Estimate heat duties for heaters and coolers as part of heat integration studies
Verify mass closure during commissioning by comparing measured and predicted streams
Optimize purge fraction to control impurity accumulation in a recycle loop

FAQ

What inputs are mandatory?

At minimum provide stream flow rates, compositions, and reaction stoichiometry; physical properties and measurement uncertainties improve accuracy.

Can it detect bad measurements?

Yes. The data-reconciliation routines include gross error detection to isolate and flag suspect measurements before final closure.

Which calculation methods are supported?

Sequential-modular, equation-oriented, and data-reconciliation approaches are supported to fit different modeling workflows.