Free Software for Chemical Process Simulation? 28
chthonicdaemon asks: "I am about to embark on a mission: to create a Free (as in freedom) chemical process simulator. My field is control engineering, and as such, dynamic simulation is what it is all about. There is an open source steady-state simulator called sim42, but I have not found one that can do dynamics. There is also a lot of work available in the form of implementation standards, so I am confident that it can be done. Is there anything like this out there that I have not found, and what open technology could I leverage to get this done faster (perhaps something like SML)."
Consider Common Lisp (Score:1)
Before you start, why are you doing this? (Score:2)
It's highly unlikely that you're the first person to attempt such a project. In all likelyhood, there's something out there that either does what you want it to do or can be easily modified to do the job with a lot less effort that starting from scratch. But where are you going to find it?
Well, if I were you, I'd fire
Re:Before you start, why are you doing this? (Score:2)
Re:Before you start, why are you doing this? (Score:2)
In the UK, and most of the English-speaking world, we tend to write "orientated", but pronounce the word as "oriented". Our American cousins (of which I assume you are one) spell some things differently from us, and this is one such example. Common English words such as "colour", "vigour", etc have letters dropped from them in their US spellings and some such as "
Re:Before you start, why are you doing this? (Score:2)
> university, fails to take into account the
> majority of the English-speaking world.
Which would be Indian.
Re:Before you start, why are you doing this? (Score:2)
Now you're just jerking me around...
Re:Before you start, why are you doing this? (Score:2)
If you don't believe me that "spelt" is correct then I suggest you look it up in a dictionary or ask an English teacher/professor.
VMD? (Score:2, Informative)
outsource to India (Score:1, Funny)
commercial (Score:2)
Just trying to get a better idea of what you're looking for...
The first place I look... (Score:1)
SIMULINK (Score:2)
Re:SIMULINK (Score:2)
No. Essentially we want to build a dynamic chemical process simulator. Something like this http://www.aspentech.com/includes/product.cfm?Ind u stryID=9&ProductID=128. Interestingly, we have already built a system on top of Simulink that does a lot of what we want to do, but we have taken it about as far as it will go. We need to develop our own framework to get some extra speed and to avoid havi
Re:SIMULINK (Score:2)
Good luck.
Various (Score:2)
I really don't know of any free / free dynamic simulators out there, even the academic ones are costly unless you are academic.
ABACUSS II is available free from MIT, but it may not be the most friendly simulator, compared to Aspen or Hysys. Look at Barton's page. Process Systems Enterprises at Imperial has Gproms, they may give that to universities for free as well.
Generally, for dynamic simulation, you are looking to solve Differential Alge
Free Virus (Score:1)
Some thoughts (Score:3, Informative)
If the submitter is following the thread still, I'd be interested to know more of what exactly they'd be interested in using this for in control systems. Are they interested in tuning controllers, training simulations, RTO? Different needs require different tools.
Most of the important points have been made. Thermo package is going to be a big concern. A lot of money is invested in these things. The algotithms are often published, but the coefficients and implementations are proprietary. Without good reliable thermo, your results won't be of much interest to anyone.
For dynamics, another concern is flow driven versus pressure driven. Each has it's advantages and more importantly serious compromises.
Unit operations aren't actually that bad to model mathematically. Having a good flash algorithm will go a long way. Converging distillation with any kind of speed will take some cleverness, but is conceptually pretty simple. It is just scaling the VLE over many components.
I've written simple stuff in Matlab pretty easily. Binary distillations, as an example.
The biggest hurdle you will face is crediblity. Aspen, Simulation Sciences, and the like have been around a long time and have a pretty good track record. Engineers are comfortable with them enough to base design decisions on them. Even at that, any time a new version is released we are probably 6 months away from adoption due to our validation cycle.
The company I work for is really near the top of the game as far as modelling refineries especially. And even with all of our experience and expertise, we are really wary of dynamic simulation. The concepts are really easy, and it doesn't seem like that big of a jump from steady state. But we take an awful long time to develop a dynamic simulation to the point where we are comfortable using it for design work. So much of it has to be hand-crafted as opposed to the simple drop-and-connect of many of the steady state packages.
Long development cycles are big dollars, and most clients aren't prepared to spend them unless the carrot is big enough. Relief system modelling is where we see it the most often.
I hope I am not being too discouraging here. Engineers by nature a fairly cautious lot. If something I design screws up, there are dead people and a smoking hole in the ground.
Oh, and if the question of sequential modular versus equation oriented doesn't mean anything to you, I would walk away.
Re:Some thoughts (Score:2)
In our lab, we have copies of Aspen Dynamic, Hisys and a few other dynamic simulators which aim to be very accurate. Unfortunately it is not really possible to tinker with the internals of these packages, and that can be very rewarding when learning about simulation/modelling.
The software we have in mind
Re:Some thoughts (Score:2)
I hope I didn't come off as too negative in my previous post. Now that I know more about what you are headed for, I think you have a good chance of putting something together.
I especially wish you good luck with CAPE-Open compatability, I've always thought that it was a great idea but that the big players were dragging their feet because they had a vested interest in th
What is your background? (Score:2)
Re:What is your background? (Score:2)
I have extensive experience in programming and hands-on process experience. I think I am not totally unprepared. So, feel free to ramble.
Re:What is your background? (Score:1)