What's New in Aspen Plus V7.

3
Aspen Plus V7.3 includes a number of important new features:
l You can extract experimental physical property data for thousands of binary mixtures using the NIST
ThermoData Engine (TDE).
l Integrated Economic Analysis now allows user-defined custom sizing and estimating methods through a
new costing templates feature.
l You can now view a greenhouse gas summary that reports the carbon equivalents produced directly in
the process or indirectly by consumption of process utilities.
l Aspen Plus simulation cases can be sent directly to Aspen Energy Analyzer to evaluate and optimize
process heating and cooling.
l Conventional solid components can now be included in the mixed substream, making it much easier to
simulate processes with solids.
See the sections below for a complete list of new and improved features.
Workflow and Usability
l The new Start Page provides easy access to AspenTech news. You can set the My News tab to display
any RSS feed or disable the Start Page on the Start Page tab of the Tools | Options dialog box.
l New Analysis toolbar provides easy access to features such as Aspen Distillation Synthesis, Aspen
Energy Analyzer, Aspen Flare System Analyzer, and Aspen Exchanger Design & Rating.
l The Pro/II converter has been enhanced and now supports a number of features which were previously
not supported or not converted correctly. See the Compatibility Notes for a list.
l There are now commands on the View menu to enable or disable the display of Connection Streams
and Measurements. These perform the same functions as the checkboxes on the Flowsheet tab of the
Tools | Options dialog box but are more easily accessible. These also have shortcut keys Ctrl+Alt+C and
Ctrl+Alt+M.
l Some shortcut keys and mouse controls used for navigating around the flowsheet have been changed or
added for ease of use and consistency with HYSYS. In particular, the mouse wheel and Page Up and Page
Down keys can be used to zoom in/out by small increments, while Shift+Page Up, Shift+Page Down, and
Home can be used for Zoom In, Zoom Out, and Zoom Full. See the compatibility notes for the full list of
these changes.
l The Find Object command has been enhanced to allow you to search in a specific Hierarchy level and to
allow you to search for blocks or streams using wildcards.
l The Model Summary form now also appears in each supported block, allowing you to view and modify
all scalar block variables for the block in one place.
l When you open a file and then save it, now the default save type is the type of the original file. The
default save type in Tools | Options is used only for new models, and this is initially set to the more
convenient compound file (*.apwz) type. The default Aspen Plus file type stored inside the compound file
is now Aspen Plus Document (*.apw).
l New option on the Setup | Simulation Options | Calculations sheet to automatically generate an XML
results file when running an input file or batch run.
l Now when you rename or delete streams after EO synchronization, a new dialog box lets you
update/delete corresponding EO variable names entered as specifications on various forms. In previous
versions, these names could not be updated automatically, leading to various problems.
l You can now specify descriptions for EO variables on the EO Input | Configure sheet which will be
saved with your model. This can be used to document complex or custom EO models.
l The installer now has an option to install without the SQL database for Aspen Properties Enterprise
Database. With this option, the database must be installed on another machine and the Database
Manager must be used to configure the database connection. There is also an option in the Server
installation option to just install the database without any of the products that use it.
Integrated Economic Analysis
l Material costs for raw materials and products are now passed from Aspen Plus to Aspen Process Economic
Analyzer. Their totals, along with annualized capital cost, total utilities cost, total product sales, desired
rate of return, and pay out period are now reported on the Summary tab on the Equipment Summary
grid.
l Aspen Plus can now use costing templates with Aspen Process Economic Analyzer to specify the location
of the project, units set, lifetime of the project, and other parameters.
l The costing template is specified on the Setup | Costing Options | Costing Options sheet. Key
parameters can also be changed here. You can create custom templates in Aspen Process Economic
Analyzer to specify custom sizing and mapping options. This removes the need to specify these options
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each time you perform integrated sizing and costing.
l The Costing toolbar now also has buttons linked to the Costing Options and Stream Price forms.
l Equipment weight and total installed weight are now reported for each piece of equipment in the
Equipment Summary grid.
Engineering Enhancements
l Aspen Plus now reports CO
2
equivalents for greenhouse gases produced by each unit operation block,
those emitted by utilities used, and totals for the overall process, as well as the carbon fee/tax for
emissions. See Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the help for details about this feature.
l It is now possible to use Utilities in HeatX blocks with the Rigorous methods, only in Design and
Rating calculation types.
l Three new mass transfer and interfacial area correlations for packings have been added for use in Aspen
Rate-Based Distillation. HanleyPall (2010) models Pall rings, HanleyIMTP (2010) models IMTP, CMR, and
b-ETA rings, and HanleyStruc (2010) models sheet metal structured packings.
l RadFrac, PetroFrac, and MultiFrac will now allow you to specify a column diameter in rating calculations as
small as 0.01 m. Previously the minimum was 0.1 m. This will allow you to more easily model laboratory-
scale columns.
l Pressure relief calculations have been improved to make them more accurate (see Compatibility Notes for
details).
l It is now possible to use an RPlug model without reactions (for instance, to model heat flux in detail).
l In RPlug reactors with solids, you can now specify a solid holdup profile when you specify the liquid
holdup profile. In this case the reaction rates in vapor, liquid, and solid phases are all affected by the
portion of the reactor occupied by those phases.
l The Dryer model can now remove water from NC substreams in which it is specified via the Moisture
specification of the PROXANAL attribute, when water is specified as a moisture component. It does not
operate on any other moisture components in NC substreams.
l The Pump model now has options for its vapor check in the same way the Compr model does for its liquid
check. See the Pump | Setup | Calculation Options sheet configure these options.
l Common RXN_RCSTRR now contains catalyst data. This allows you to access such data in user
subroutines written for RCSTR blocks. See Aspen Plus User Models for details.
Solids
It is now possible to use conventional inert solid components (specified as Solid on the Components form) in
the MIXED substream. This allows you to perform simple solid modeling without the complication of using
multiple substreams.
l Solid components with a particle size distribution still need to be used with one of the substreams that
contain a PSD attribute.
l EO formulations of Mixer, Flash2, Flash3, Decanter, Pump, FSplit, SSplit, Mult, Dupl, Selector and
Streams support solids in the MIXED substream. Other models in EO do not support solids in the MIXED
substream, and will issue a warning if they are found. (Depending on the properties available for these
components, they may lead to errors in the EO models which do not support them, or may run but lead to
inaccurate results.)
l The SFRAC property represents the solid fraction within the MIXED substream. Previously, this solid
fraction consisted only of salts, but now it may also include conventional inert solids.
l The new CISOLID-COMPS paragraph in input language specifies which components are declared as solids.
It is required only if you use components of type Solid in the MIXED substream.
l Properly-specified backup files from previous versions (including those embedded into .apw or .apwz files)
will continue to work as they always did, with all their solids in CISOLID substreams.
You can choose to put some of these solids into the MIXED substream and some in the CISOLID substream.
When you do so:
l For most blocks, solids will remain in the substream in which they were specified.
l RStoic can be used to move solid components between the MIXED and CISOLID substreams.
l Solid products of REquil and RGibbs will be placed in the CISOLID substream if it is present in the outlet
stream, or the MIXED substream otherwise.
NIST TDE with Binary Data
l The NIST TDE feature has been significantly enhanced to include experimental data for binary mixtures.
The available data include VLE, LLE, heat of mixing, density, viscosity, thermal conductivity, surface
tension, and others. These data can be used to perform data regression using the existing Data
Regression capability. These data constitute virtually all available experimental binary data known to
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date. The retrieved data can be viewed, plotted and saved to forms for further use in data regression.
l For binary VLE data, TDE includes the capability to perform thermodynamic consistency tests. The tests
include a quantitative measure of the data quality (quality factor), which will be useful in helping you
select appropriate data sets to use.
l This feature also includes a new workflow that allows you to perform data regression or evaluation
directly, thus enhancing ease of use.
l The NIST TDE engine has been updated to version 5.0. The NIST-TRC databank has been updated based
on the June 2010 NIST SOURCE data archive and version 5.0 of TDE; over 4000 more compounds have
been added.
Data Regression Enhancements
l The evaluation feature of the standard Data Regression (Properties | Regression | Input | Setup
sheet, option Evaluation) has been improved for VLE with 3 or more components and for LLE. Now a
flash is performed to ensure results will be consistent with results obtained by other methods.
l Experimental binary data available in TDE can be used to populate the Data form directly (Properties |
Data | Mixture | Data sheet). When you define a Data set containing two components, you can retrieve
the experimental data from TDE instead of entering them manually.
Databank Updates
l New APV73 database was created, containing new PURE25 databank based on the January 2010 release
of the DIPPR database. This databank is similar to the PURE24 databank, but many parameters for a
large number of components have been updated, and 42 components have been added.
Alias Name CAS Number
C22H44-D1 1-DOCOSENE 1599-67-3
C24H48-D1 1-TETRACOSENE 10192-32-2
C26H52-N10 1-HEXACOSENE 18835-33-1
C28H56-N2 1-OCTACOSENE 18835-34-2
C12H16-D4 5-O-TOLYL-2-PENTENE 6047-69-4
C7H12-N3 BICYCLO-2-2-1-HEPTANE 279-23-2
C8H14-N3 BICYCLO-2-2-2-OCTANE 280-33-1
C18H24-N6 TRIAMANTANE 13349-10-5
C22H28-D1 TETRAMANTANE 27745-90-0
C10H10O-D1 3,5-DIMETHYLBENZOFURAN 10410-35-2
C14H14O4 DIALLYL-PHTHALATE 131-17-9
C19H38O2-N1 METHYL-STEARATE 112-61-8
C15H30O2-N1 METHYL-MYRISTATE 124-10-7
C17H34O2-N1 METHYL-PALMITATE 112-39-0
C10H12O2-N5 ETHYL-PHENYLETHANOATE 101-97-3
C8H18N2O2-D1 4-2-2-AMINOETHOXYETHYLMORPHOLINE 20207-13-0
C8H17NO3 BETA-MORPHOLINOETHOXYETHANOL 3603-45-0
C10H9N-N5 8-METHYLQUINOLINE 611-32-5
C4H9NO-N1 2-BUTANONE-OXIME 96-29-7
C6H14S-N1 ISOPROPYL-SULFIDE 625-80-9
C6H8S 2,3-DIMETHYLTHIOPHENE 632-16-6
C6H15CLO3SI 3-CHLOROPROPYL-TRIMETHOXY-SILANE 2530-87-2
C9H20O5SI GLYCIDOXYPROPYLTRIMETHOXYSILANE 2530-83-8
CLF3 CHLORINE-TRIFLUORIDE 7790-91-2
C6H15O3P TRIETHYL-ESTER-PHOSPHOROUS-ACID 122-52-1
F3P PHOSPHORUS-TRIFLUORIDE 7783-55-3
C8H4CL2O2-D1 TEREPHTHALOYL-CHLORIDE 100-20-9
C3H8N2O 1,3-DIMETHYL-UREA 96-31-1
C2H6N2O-N1 MONOMETHYLUREA 598-50-5
C4H12N2O-D1 BIS-2-AMINOETHYL-ETHER 2752-17-2
C6H14N2O-D2 4-2-AMINOETHYL-MORPHOLINE 2038-03-1
C6H13NO-N1 N-ETHYLMORPHOLINE 100-74-3
C11H16O2-D1 PG-ALPHA-METHOXYBENZYL-ETHER 871518-84-2
C11H16O2-D2 2-ALPHA-METHOXYBENZYL-1-PROPANOL 857237-25-3
C4H8O2S-D1 METHYL-3-MERCAPTOPROPIONATE 2935-90-2
C4H3F7O-N1 HEPTAFLUOROPROPYL-METHYL-ETHER 375-03-1
C9H8O4-N2 MONOMETHYL-TEREPHTHALATE 1679-64-7
C7H12O3-D1 ETHYL-LEVULINATE 539-88-8
C10H10MG BIS(CYCLOPENTADIENYL)MAGNESIUM 1284-72-6
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l APV73 also contains the new BIODIESEL databank containing 461 components including triglycerides,
diglycerides, and monoglycerides which appear in biodiesel production processes.
l Binary parameters have been added for the water-vinyl chloride system for NRTL and UNIQUAC models,
and for THF-methyl acetate for NRTL, UNIQUAC, WILSON, and their -HOC and -RK variations.
l The NRTL binary parameters for water/2-ethylhexanol in the LLE-ASPEN databank were incorrect and
have been updated based on regression of new data.
l Binary parameters for water with ketones have been updated:
Physical Property Methods
l New property methods have been added based on Aspen HYSYS property packages: HYSGLYCO, HYSPR,
HYSSRK. The HYSYS databank containing parameters used in these methods has also been added. This is
a very significant enhancement to Aspen Plus in that it brings the three most commonly used methods in
Aspen HYSYS to the Aspen Plus product family. These methods provide additional industry-proven
methods for oil & gas and gas-processing applications.
l New user routine PCHSLU for hydrocarbon solubility of pseudocomponents. Hydrocarbon solubility is
needed when the dirty water approach to water handling is used. To use this subroutine, write a
subroutine that calculates the parameters of the Hydrocarbon Solubility model from average boiling point,
API gravity, specific gravity, and/or average molecular weight of the petroleum fraction, using the
argument list from Chapter 25 of Aspen Plus User Models, then specify User Routine PCHSLU for
Hydrocarbon Solubility in a petroleum property method on the Components | Petro
Characterization | Property Methods form and use this method on the Components | Petro
Characterization | Generation form.
l The Liquid Constant Liquid Molar Volume model has been enhanced to use the General Pure Component
Liquid Molar Volume model when parameters are available for it and no molar volume VLCONS has been
entered. This model is used in the Solids Handling Property Method used for systems where the solid
properties are most important. It should now provide better liquid properties when VLCONS is not
entered.
l New option codes have been added to ENRTL-RK, ENRTL-SR, and NRTL-SAC for calculating the dielectric
constant and density of water. For STMNBS2, there is a new choice in the fugacity and enthalpy option
code.
l The REFPROP property method has been updated to use the latest version (8.1c) from NIST.
l New liquid thermal conductivity model based on the API procedure 12A3.2-1 has been added. This is the
current recommended API procedure and should provide more accurate results for petroleum fractions.
Chemistry
l In Chemistry blocks you can now specify the equilibrium constants for reactions based on a version of the
van 't Hoff equation instead of the expression which has been available in past versions. Additionally,
there is now a term for modeling the pressure dependence of the equilibrium constant which can be used
with either expression.
l In Chemistry blocks you can now specify the reactive or inert components instead of specifying reactions,
and let the Aspen Physical Property System use Gibbs energy minimization to compute the expected
products from among these components. With this option you do not specify any reactions or equilibrium
constants.
C40H62O19 SUCROSE-ACETATE-ISOBUTYRATE 126-13-6
C5H10O-N1 2-METHYLOXOLANE 96-47-9
SIH3CL MONO-CHLOROSILANE 13465-78-6
Name 1 Name 2 Alias 1 Alias 2 Models
METHYL-ACETATE Water C3H6O2-3 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC, Wilson
DIETHYL-KETONE Water C5H10O-4 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
METHYL-N-PROPYL-KETONE Water C5H10O-2 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
DIISOPROPYL-KETONE Water C7H14O H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
2-HEXANONE Water C6H12O-D3 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
2-HEPTANONE Water C7H14O-D2 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
2-OCTANONE Water C8H16O-E2 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
2-NONANONE Water C9H18O-E1 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
3-HEPTANONE Water C7H14O-E1 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
3-OCTANONE Water C8H16O-D2 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
3-NONANONE Water C9H18O-D3 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
4-HEPTANONE Water C7H14O-E2 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
5-NONANONE Water C9H18O-E2 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
DIISOBUTYL-KETONE Water C9H18O-D1 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
5-METHYL-2-HEXANONE Water C7H14O-D10 H2O NRTL, UNIQUAC
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l The activity coefficient basis for ionic components is now specified within each Chemistry block rather
than at the global level. This basis can also be specified on the first screen of the Electrolyte Wizard.
Prop-Set Properties
l New Prop-Set properties ISENEX, ISENEXMX (isentropic exponent or isentropic coefficient) have been
added.
In addition to these changes, you may also wish to browse the lists of features added in versions V7.2, V7.1,
V7.0, 2006.5, 2006, 2004.1 and 2004.
Compatibility Notes

See Also
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