Aspen: Analysis or simulation

Type :

Theses

Pages :

42 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

05/22/2009

Category :

Science & technology

Sub category :

Computer science

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Summary :

Introduction
An overview of Aspen Plus
1. History
2. Modeling concepts in Aspen Plus
3. Features of Aspen Plus
4. Options of Aspen Plus
Key components in Aspen Plus
Literature review
Sensitivity analysis
Conclusion
Introduction to reactive distillation (RD)
1. Background study
2. RD modeling
References

Abstract

A process consists of chemical components being mixed, separated, heated, cooled, and converted by unit operations. These components are transferred from unit to unit through process. Process flow sheet can simply be defined as a blue print of a plant or the language of chemical processes. Like a work of art, they describe an existing process or a hypothetical process in sufficient detail to convey the essential features. It identifies all feed streams, unit operations, streams that inter-connect the unit operations and finally the product streams. Operating conditions and other technical details are included depending on the detail level of the flow sheet. The level can vary from a rough sketch to a very detailed design specification of a complex plant.

For steady-state operation, any process flow sheet leads to a finite set of algebraic equations. For a case where we have only one reactor with appropriate feed and product streams the number of equations may be manageable by manual hand calculations or simple computer applications. However, as the complexity of a flow sheet increases and when distillation columns, heat exchangers, absorbers with many purge and recycle streams come into the picture the number of equations easily approach many ten thousands. In these cases, solving the set of algebraic equations becomes a challenge in itself. However, there are computer applications called process flow sheet simulators specialized in solving these kinds of large equation sets. Some well known process flow sheet simulators are aspen Plus, ChemCad and PRO/II. These products have highly refined user interfaces and on-line component databases. They are used in real world applications from interpreting laboratory scale data to monitoring a full scale plant.