Process simulation in chemical engineering

The process industries are faced with an increasingly competitive environment, ever-changing market conditions, and government regulations, yet they still must increase productivity and profitability. These business objectives are achieved by reducing the time required to get new products to market, increasing the quality of product produced, operating the plant more safely and efficiently, and/or designing plants for optimum performance along their life cycle. In the process industries, operational efficiencies, production economics, product quality, and, ultimately, bottom line performance can be adversely affected by a multitude of factors. Many of these factors are extremely complex and are subject to varying degrees of unpredictability. To avoid production delays, downtime, or off-spec products, process manufacturers require cost-effective tools that help to identify and correct anticipated problems before they occur. Process engineers routinely address difficult manufacturing and production issues.

Unfortunately, experience alone is not always sufficient to answer the questions that continually arise, and trial and error efforts to provide meaningful insight are usually cost-prohibitive. Process simulation is recognized as a powerful tool that helps managers and engineers link business operations to process operations. Process simulation specifically enables resolution of common issues such as ensuring safety, ensuring environmental compliance, improving operability, improving start-ups and shut-downs, achieving consistent product quality, troubleshooting operational problems, and optimizing batch process operations.

We, chemical engineers, are often faced situations that requiring conceptual or detail modeling about chemical or bio-chemical processes. We want to suggest a best solution or at least a useful workaround to get closed to the best solution, thus a smart modeling method and also having right simulation tools are very important.

I wish I could make this blog as a valuable open resource for all of us, the Chemical Engineers.