Applications 

Efficient process operation and superior product quality are essential goals in developing and maintaining a competitive edge in today's chemical industry. ChemSim uses rigorous mathematical process models to help you achieve these goals. 

Applying process simulation leads to greater understanding of the complex relationship between operating conditions and process performance characteristics; plant capacity, product properties, and energy consumption. Plant models can be used to perform debottlenecking studies, process optimization studies, plant retrofit design testing, process troubleshooting and other process improvement tasks. 

Following are examples of some of the application areas for process modeling. 

Revamp / Retrofit / Debottlenecking studies 

Revamp examples are often targeted at production of commodity chemicals. 

Pain - Often older plants are still in use. Customer needs to lower operating costs while continuing to meet demand. 

Solution - Produce a complete plant model including all complex interactions of these highly integrated processes 

Benefits - Sensitivity studies can often reveal potentials for increased profitability with corresponding decreases in energy consumption. For these large chemical complexes, decreasing energy consumption by just 1 or 2 percent can realize huge cost savings. 

Process Optimization 

Polymer production is an example of a complex process where key parameters often considered are: 

- Optimal production of monomer 
- Degree of polymerization 
- Product quality specifications of the polymer 
- By-product contents 

Pain - Improve product quality 

Solution - Incorporate process data and fundamentals (polymerization kinetics, phase equilibrium, mass transfer, heat transfer, equipment configuration) into a complete plant model. 

Benefits - Obtain a thorough understanding of the relationship between the process conditions/ configuration and product quality. 

Environmental Auditing / Waste Minimization / Pollution Control. 

Pain - Chemical plants need to comply with environmental regulations. 

Solution - From an original flow sheet of the process, add extra unit operations to
describe the treatment of the various waste streams 

Benefits - Modeling allows prediction of emissions under various operational conditions. Models are used to predict the removal efficiency of contaminants from various process streams in order to show compliance with environmental permits granted under Title V of the Clean Air Act. 

Resource Management - Water Use

Pain - Industries such as the pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries require large quantities of ultrapure water.

Solution - Produce a complete mass balances of all material flows, and investigate process alternatives, optimizing the consumption of the specified component 

Benefits - Optimization and sensitivity studies can show where the greatest savings can be made, by reducing water consumption. 

Environmental Impact Assessment - Semiconductor Industry

Pain - The manufacture of computer chips consumes lots of energy and generates harmful, toxic waste products, thus producing a high value for the environmental impact.

Solution - Construct models for different process alternatives. The objective is to ensure accurate material balances, and account for every component. Component attributes may be included to provide weighting factors for the environmental impacts. 

Benefits - Modeling allows alternative scenarios to be tested to determine the best methods for reducing the environmental impact.