Stationary and dynamic flowsheeting in the chemical engineering industry (Q1366433)

The key tool for modeling a chemical engineering plant is the flowsheet, an abstract graph-oriented scheme of the plant containing in its nodes the single process steps, so called unit operations. The aims of the present paper are to introduce mathematical models for the most important units and to discuss mathematical aspects of stationary and dynamic process simulation. A flowsheet example demonstrates a complete simulation model of an actual plant. Steady-states analysis of the process leads to the solution of large sparse systems of nonlinear equations. A survey of advanced numerical methods for solving these problems is given. Techniques for steady-state optimization are also discussed. Dynamic flowsheeting is described by large systems of differential-algebraic equations. Special attention is given to the index of the model equations for typical unit operations and to the treatment of discontinuities.