Petroleum Processing and Research

Process Simulation & Process Design in chemical engg.

Process simulation is the representation of a chemical process by a mathematical model, which is further solved to obtain information about the performance of the chemical process. It is also known as process flow sheeting. Flow-sheeting is the use of computer aids to perform steady-state heat and mass balancing, sizing, and costing calculations for a chemical process. This includes the historical developments, basic architectures, and solving algorithms.

Many regard that process simulation is equivalent to process design, which is indeed a misleading understanding. In fact, process simulation and process synthesis are two important and interrelated elements in chemical process design, which may be used to achieve optimum process design. The aim for process simulation is to predict how a defined process would actually behave under a given set of operating conditions. In other words, we aim to predict the outputs of the process when the process flowsheet and its inputs are given.