Introduction to Various Professional

Chemical Process Simulators

By: A P Upadhyay
Steady state process Dynamic process
simulation simulation
• PRO/II • PRO II
• COCO simulator + • UniSim
ChemSep • CADSIM Plus
• Aspen Plus • Aspen Plus
• Aspen HYSYS • Aspen HYSYS
• ChemCAD
• PD-PLUS
• DWSIM
 Equation solver
• iiSE Simulator
• GAMS
• gProms
• VMGSim
• Aspen Plus in EO
• Aspen Custom modeler
• ASCEND
• MATLAB
• SCILAB
• POLYMATH
 Aspen Plus
• Developer: AspenTech
On the market: commercial
Main Features:
• Aspen Plus is one of the most known process simulators in
industry and also one of the most expensive ones.
• It enables a wide range of calculation possibilities for the
design, operation, and optimization of safe, profitable
manufacturing facilities.
• It enables the steady-state and dynamic simulation of
petrochemical, chemical and pharmaceutical processes,
including non-ideal, electrolytic, and solid systems.
• Mixed solution methodologies can be used to achieve fast
calculation and provide full specification flexibility.
• Leverage modeling investments by scaling from single models
to full facility flowsheets.
 Chemcad

• Developer: Chemstations Inc.

On the market: commercial
Main Features:
• Chemical process simulation software that includes libraries of
chemical components, thermodynamic methods, and unit
operations to allow steady-state and dynamic simulation of
continuous chemical processes from lab scale to full scale.
• Ideal for users who want to design processes, or rate existing
processes, in steady state.
• Dynamic process simulation software that takes steady-state
simulations to the next level of fidelity to allow dynamic analysis of
flowsheets.
• The possibilities are endless: operability check-out, PID loop tuning,
operator training, even online process control and soft sensor
functionality and is ideal for users who want to design or rate
dynamic processes.
 COCO
• Developer: AmsterCHEM
On the market: open source
Main Features:
• COCO is a cape open to cape open simulation environment with modules
presented with interesting names such as: COFE - the CAPE-OPEN
Flowsheet Environment is an intuitive graphical user interface to chemical
flowsheeting.
• COFE displays properties of streams, deals with unit-conversion and
provides plotting facilities.
• TEA - COCO's Thermodynamics for Engineering Applications, is based on
the code of the thermodynamic library of ChemSep and includes a data
bank of over 430 commonly used chemicals.
• The package exhibits more than 100 property calculation methods with
their analytical or numerical derivatives.
• COUSCOUS - the CAPE-OPEN Unit-operations Simple package is shipped
with COCO. It contains a splitter, a mixer, heat exchangers, pumps and
reactors amongst other unit operations.
• ChemSep-LITE, a limited version of ChemSep with a maximum of 40
compounds and 300 stages, can serve as an equilibrium distillation unit
operation in COCO.
 DWSim
• Developer: Daniel Medeiros
On the market: open source
Main Features:
• DWSIM is an open source, CAPE-OPEN compliant chemical process
simulator for Windows and Linux systems.
• Written in VB.NET and C#, DWSIM features a comprehensive set of unit
operations, advanced thermodynamic models, support for reacting
systems, petroleum characterization tools and a fully-featured graphical
interface.
• Some of the features are VLE, VLLE and SLE calculations using equation of
state, supports CAPE-OPEN Unit Operations and Thermo 1.0/1.1 Property
Packages, supports ChemSep's Component Database and Column Model,
Process Flowsheet Diagram (PFD) Drawing Interface, Rigorous
Distillation/Absorption Column models, Support for Chemical Reactions
and Reactors, Characterization of Petroleum Fractions using bulk
properties and/or ASTM/TBP distillation curves and creation of
Hypothetical Components using UNIFAC groups, Multivariate Optimization
and Sensitivity Analysis utility, Excel Interface for Thermodynamic
Calculations and more.
 gPROMS
• Developer: PS Enterprise
On the market: commercial
Main Features:
gPROMS FormulatedProducts is PSE's new platform for the integrated
design and optimization of formulated products and their manufacturing
processes.
• It allows scientists and engineers to screen formulations for end-user
attributes, determine whether they can be manufactured efficiently, and
explore the design space of the whole formulation and manufacturing
chain.
• gPROMS is an advanced mechanistic process modeling tool, integrating
crystallization, solids processing and oral absorption on a single platform.
• It builds on and strengthens the existing capabilities of gCRYSTAL®,
gSOLIDS® and gCOAS® in a systems-based approach that links product
performance to process and formulation parameters.
• Users can screen formulations for end-user attributes, identify risk factors
and optimize the entire formulation and manufacturing chain. Application
areas include crystallization, solids processing, life sciences, food & dairy
and more.
 HYSYS
• Developer: AspenTech
On the market: commercial
Main Features:
• Aspen HYSYS, similar to Aspen Plus but dedicated to process
simulation of oil, gas and refining processes.
• It allows using industry-specific unit operation models and powerful
tools to optimize operating parameters for feedstock changes.
• Aspen HYSYS Petroleum Refining now also has a complete suite of
rigorous kinetic models to support all major refinery processes.
• Software allows using the simulation to make better planning and
optimization decisions with the support of calibrated models.
• It also includes tools to easily import and export petroleum assays to
and from Aspen PIMS with the new Aspen Assay Management. You
can also automate the export of rigorous reactor models to Aspen
PIMS (LP software).
• As mentioned earlier, there are a few general-purpose simulation
software packages available for both commercial and educational
purposes.
• Out of 'these, ASPEN Plus (of AspenTech) and HYSIS (of HyproTech)
are widely used round the globe.
• On 3 1 May 2002, HyproTech merged with AspenTech and is now
part of a new engineering business unit within AspenTech that will
focus on engineering and asset life-cycle solutions, including
simulation, engineering, evaluation, and optimization technologies.
• HYSYS is a product that continually extends the bounds of process
engineering software. With HYSYS, one can create rigorous steady-
state and dynamic models for plant design and troubleshooting.
• Through the completely interactive HYSYS interface, it is easy to
manipulate process variables and unit operation topology, as well as
to fully customize a simulation using its OLE (object linking and
embedding) extensibility capability.
• HYSYS has been developed with Hyprotech's overall vision of the
ultimate process simulation solution in mind. The vision has led to
create a product that is
• Integrated
• intuitive and interactive
• open and extensible
• HYSIS Products:
• HYSYS.Process
• HYSYS.Plant
• HYSYS Refinery
• HYSYS.OTS
• HYSYS RTO
• HYSYS Concept etc.
 Reference
• [1] https://elmoukrie.com/what-is-the-most-
useful-software-in-chemical-engineering-the-
list-of-most-important-calculation-tools/