CAPE in der Verfahrenstechnik aus industrieller Sicht – Status,Bedarf, Prognose oder Vision?

CAPE in chemical engineering from an industrial viewpoint – Status, demands, outlook. The use of computers for solving chemical process problems is steadily gaining in importance. Simulation, design, optimization, and synthesis of processes are the main applications. The working group “Process simulation and process design” in the Dechema specialist committee “Use of computers in chemical engineering” has discussed the state of the art of simulation tools. Demands of industry on future tools have been outlined and a new simulator concept presented. If this concept is pursued, then interested companies will have to support development. The article presents background information and is intended to stimulate further interest.     

A New Era for Chemical Apparatus Engineering?

The ACHEMA conference is an impressive exhibition on chemical apparatus engineering, closely connected with the epoch‐making developments of chemical and process engineering. It is most timely to think about new opportunities of development. Large‐scale plant engineering and general plant construction has experienced considerable improvement during the past decades. The effects of these changes are particularly perceptible in the economic sector of German apparatus engineering. Economic pressures have given an additional impetus to a considerable shrinking process. Chemical apparatus engineering will have to focus on two main pillars in the near future: highly qualified standard and innovative products. The latter must be developed in close cooperation with the economic sector of chemical engineering in order to put the hardware required for new technologies and process strategies on the market. This article names fields of manifestation of the general technical progress. The thrust is directed toward an elevated level of product quality that can be achieved from the point of view of apparatus engineering. These are properties that will finally lead to higher profitability. The signs for a new start of apparatus engineering are quite favorable, and this opportunity has to be seized. The ACHEMA conference as a location of exchange of experiences and an opportunity of critical assessment could be a source of ideas for future work.     

A future perspective on the role of industrial biotechnology for chemicals production

The development of recombinant DNA technology, the need for renewable raw materials and a green, sustainable profile for future chemical processes have been major drivers in the implementation of industrial biotechnology. The use of industrial biotechnology for the production of chemicals is well established in the pharmaceutical industry but is moving down the value chain toward bulk chemicals. Chemical engineers will have an essential role in the development of new processes where the need is for new design methods for effective implementation, just as much as new technology. Most interesting is that the design of these processes relies on an integrated approach of biocatalyst and process engineering.     

Computer technology in process systems engineering

This paper looks at the future of computer aided process systems engineering. Productivity issues are discussed with respect to software, computer design technology, engineering relational data base management systems, and data independent programming. Very large systems integration technology will have a major impact on the structure of process systems engineering software. Standards are proposed for host languages and host operating system. Expert systems will find an increasing role.     

Process considerations for the scale-up and implementation of biocatalysis

With increasing emphasis on renewable feed-stocks and green chemistry, biocatalytic processes will have an important role in the next generation of industrial processes for chemical production. However, in comparison with conventional industrial chemistry, the use of bioprocesses in general and biocatalysis in particular is a rather young technology. Although significant progress has been made in the implementation of new processes (especially in the pharmaceutical industry) no fixed methods for process design have been established to date. In this paper we present some of the considerations required to scale-up a biocatalytic process and some of the recently developed engineering tools available to assist in this procedure. The tools will have a decisive role in helping to identify bottlenecks in the biocatalytic development process and to justify where to put effort and resources.     

Process Systems Engineering: Halfway through the first century

The area of chemical engineering which has become known as Process Systems Engineering developed initially out of the availability of a tool, the high-speed digital computer. Coincidentally, 50 years ago, computers appeared for the first time, and as they became more generally available and useful, chemical engineers were amongst the first to recognise and exploit their potential for large scale calculations. Most of the efforts of early process systems engineers were focused on circumventing the limitations of early computers, particularly their lack of speed and of storage capacity to handle the very large problems whose solution was an ultimate aim. Over the last few years these constraints have practically vanished. However, some of the discipline's most important long-term achievements have come in the form of a better understanding of large-scale concepts; these have resulted from the need to analyse and decompose problems and procedures so that they might be accessible to computing machines of limited capacity. This has also made them more accessible to we human computing machines of likewise limited capability. The first half century of process systems engineering was dominated by mathematics. Over the next half century, mathematics will be taken for granted, and emphasis will shift to information and understanding: how it can be represented, captured, accessed, transferred and exploited. The ability to perform very large numerical calculations in a simple and routine manner will encapsulate the mathematical achievements of the last 50 years and make them accessible to all chemical engineers. Future research can thus concentrate on new areas. The current ready availability of computers is already having a major effect on the way in which all chemical engineers and scientists work. In the future, computers will become not just available, but ubiquitous, providing instantaneous access to the sophisticated mathematical and informatic tools which have been and will be developed. It is difficult to predict the impact of this ubiquity, and any prediction is likely to be an underestimate. Still harder to assess are the consequences of not just the power and ubiquity of computer tools, but their connectivity. This will provide fast, worldwide connection between computer software and computer users on an unprecedented scale, and seems likely to create a qualitative change in the way in which engineers will use creatively their expanding range of powerful tools.     

Fundamentals towards a Modular Microstructured Production Plant

For years, microtechnology is being considered as an emerging technique for chemical engineering tasks to overcome safety issues corresponding to high volumes and gaining higher selectivities and yields in reaction technology. Whereas in reaction technology a broad variety of microstructured equipment is available, in product purification/separation adequate equipment is missing. Research is focused on modular fast and flexible smaller production plants being operated continuously instead of batchwise in order to reduce engineering efforts and time‐to‐process. To cope with these demands, an appropriate definition of modules, which could be easily chosen and combined, is inevitable. In addition, these modules have to be well characterized concerning fluid dynamics and separation performance. This paper focuses on the characterization of available modules/devices. A standard method and analysis of the results concerning manufacturing accuracy and operation range is proposed. Miniplant technology is described as an efficient tool to validate process concepts proposed by process simulation studies. Necessary model parameters are determined for industrial complex mixtures in miniaturized laboratory equipment. Parameters are calculated model based to gain maximal accuracy. State of the art of miniplant technology is described and basic characteristic data are presented.     

Review of information management in computer-aided engineering

The database sector of information technology is a rapidly developing area of academic and commercial interest, but until recently it has had little impact on the chemical engineering industry. Database-management systems (DBMSs) have been used as the foundation for some proprietary computer-aided process engineering (CAPE) packages, but the potential also exists for individual users of CAPE applications software to create their own tailor-made design environments by integrating packages around a DBMS. Unfortunately, traditional DBMSs are not designed to handle the complex static and dynamic nature of process engineering design data. This paper briefly examines this “data problem”, reviews a variety of proposals to deal with it and, finally, points to a need for database tools to be specifically designed for process engineering applications.     

Trends der chemischen Prozessindustrie

Current trends in chemical process technology as part of the accompanying research of the research network Energie in Industrie und Gewerbe (EE4InG) are presented. We assume that the trends circular economy and accelerated globalized innovation (modularization, process intensification and digitalization) will have an impact on the chemical industry by 2030. Technology development based on these trends will enable chemical engineering to make decisive contributions to the flexibilization and defossilization of value chains in the future.     

A systems engineering perspective on process integration in industrial biotechnology

Biotechnology has many applications in health care, agriculture, industry and the environment. By using renewable raw materials, biotechnology contributes to lowering greenhouse gas emissions and moving away from a petro‐based towards a circular sustainable economy. However, major developments are still needed to make industrial biotechnology an economic alternative to conventional processes for fuels, specialty and/or bulk chemicals production. Process integration is a holistic approach to process design, which emphasizes the unity of the process and considers the interactions between different unit operations from the outset, rather than optimizing them separately. Furthermore, it also involves the substitution of two or more unit operations by one single novel unit capable of achieving the same process goal. Conversely, process systems engineering (PSE) deals with the analysis, design, optimization, operation and control of complex process systems, as well as the development of model‐based methods and tools that allow the systematic development of processes and products across a wide range of systems involving physical and chemical change. Mature tools and applications are available for chemical technology and steps have been taken to apply PSE principles also to bioprocess technology. This perspective paper argues that an interdisciplinary approach is needed towards integrated bio‐processing in order to link basic developments in biosciences with possible industrial applications. PSE can foster the application of existing and the development of new methods and tools for bioprocess integration that could promote the sustainable production of bio‐/chemical products. The inclusion of PSE principles and methods in biochemical engineering curricula and research is essential to achieve such goals. © 2014 Society of Chemical Industry     

Information integration in chemical process engineering based on semantic technologies

During the design phase of a chemical plant, information is created by various software tools and stored in heterogeneous formats, such as technical documents, CAE databases, or simulation files. Eventually, these scattered information items need to be merged and consolidated. However, there is no efficient computer support for this task available today. While existing technologies like XML are capable of handling the structural and syntactic differences between the heterogeneous formats, these technologies cannot resolve any semantic incompatibilities. For this reason, information integration is still largely performed manually - a task which is both tedious and error-prone. Semantic technologies based on ontologies have been identified as an appropriate means to establish semantic interoperability. This contribution presents an ontology-based approach for information integration in chemical process engineering. The underlying knowledge base, which is based on the formal ontology OntoCAPE, is presented, and the design and implementation of a prototypical integration software are described. Further, the application of the software prototype in a large industrial use case is reported.     

Process intensification aspects for steam methane reforming: An overview

Steam methane reforming (SMR) is the most widely used process in industry for the production of hydrogen, which is considered as the future generation energy carrier. Having been perceived as an important source of H₂, there are abundant incentives for design and development of SMR processes mainly through the consideration of process intensification and multiscale modeling; two areas which are considered as the main focus of the future generation chemical engineering to meet the global energy challenges. This article presents a comprehensive overview of the process integration aspects for SMR, especially the potential for multiscale modeling in this area. The intensification for SMR is achieved by coupling with adsorption and membrane separation technologies, etc., and using the concept of multifunctional reactors and catalysts to overcome the mass transfer, heat transfer, and thermodynamic limitations. In this article, the focus of existing and future research on these emerging areas has been drawn. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2009     

Novel tools to speed up the technology commercialization process

As a leading technology supplier, UOP LLC is under continuous pressure to renew its technology portfolio, to stay abreast of the competition and to help customers comply with the latest in environmental legislation. In this context we have developed a suite of tools, consisting of both hardware and software, to enhance and speed up our technology commercialization capability. These tools have been implemented all along the technology development path and seamlessly communicate through the use of flowsheets as energy carriers. The current paper will attempt to give an overview of the advanced chemistry and chemical engineering tools that are enabling UOP today. Where applicable, we will give a measure of the intensification achieved and the pros and cons of the various techniques.     

Particles and suspensions in chemical engineering: Accomplishments and prospects

The role of particles and suspensions in many process of technologies and how chemical engineers encounter them are briefly described. Trends in academic chemical engineering research are discussed where it is argued that a focus on fundamentals has driven choice of research problems away from technology. Examples of contributions by chemical engineers to advances in basic understanding and technologies are given. The paper concludes with suggestions of current and future problem areas where chemical engineering research will have an impact.     

Process systems engineering: From Solvay to modern bio- and nanotechnology.: A history of development, successes and prospects for the future

The term Process Systems Engineering (PSE) is relatively recent. It was coined about 50 years ago at the outset of the modern era of computer-aided engineering. However, the engineering of processing systems is almost as old as the beginning of the chemical industry, around the first half of the 19th century. Initially, the practice of PSE was qualitative and informal, but as time went on it was formalized in progressively increasing degrees. Today, it is solidly founded on engineering sciences and an array of systems-theoretical methodologies and computer-aided tools. This paper is not a review of the theoretical and methodological contributions by various researchers in the area of PSE. Its primary objective is to provide an overview of the history of PSE, i.e. its origin and evolution; a brief illustration of its tremendous impact in the development of modern chemical industry; its state at the turn of the 21st century; and an outline of the role it can play in addressing the societal problems that we face today such as; securing sustainable production of energy, chemicals and materials for the human wellbeing, alternative energy sources, and improving the quality of life and of our living environment. PSE has expanded significantly beyond its original scope, the continuous and batch chemical processes and their associated process engineering problems. Today, PSE activities encompass the creative design, operation, and control of: biological systems (prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells); complex networks of chemical reactions; free or guided self-assembly processes; micro- and nano-scale processes; and systems that integrate engineered processes with processes driven by humans, legal and regulatory institutions. Through its emphasis on synthesis problems, PSE provides the dialectic complement to the analytical bent of chemical engineering science, thus establishing the healthy tension between synthesis and analysis, the foundation of any thriving discipline. As a consequence, throughout this paper PSE emerges as the foundational underpinning of modern chemical engineering; the one that ensures the discipline's cohesiveness in the years to come.     

Sustainable development and its implications for chemical engineering

Sustainable development presents us all with the challenge of living in ways which are compatible with the long-term constraints imposed by the finite carrying capacity of the closed system which is Planet Earth. The chemical engineering approach to the management of complex systems involving material and energy flows will be essential in meeting the challenge. System-based tools for environmental management already embody chemical engineering principles, albeit applied to broader systems than those which chemical engineering conventionally covers. Clean technology is an approach to process selection, design and operation which combines conventional chemical engineering with some of these system-based environmental management tools; it represents an interesting new direction in the application of chemical engineering to develop more sustainable processes. Less conventional applications of chemical engineering lie in public sector decisions, using the approach known as post-normal science. These applications require chemical engineers to take on a significantly different role, using their professional expertise to work with people from other disciplines and with the lay public. The contribution of chemical engineering to the formation of UK energy policy provides an example of the importance of this role. Recognising the role of engineers as agents of social change implies the need for a different set of skills, which just might make the profession more attractive to potential new recruits.     

Challenges and opportunities in computer-aided molecular design

In this paper, the significant development, current challenges and future opportunities in the field of chemical product design using computer-aided molecular design (CAMD) tools are highlighted. With the gaining of focus on the design of novel and improved chemical products, the traditional heuristic based approaches may not be effective in designing optimal products. This leads to the vast development and application of CAMD tools, which are methods that combine property prediction models with computer-assisted search in the design of various chemical products. The introduction and development of different classes of property prediction methods in the overall product design process is discussed. The exploration and application of CAMD tools in numerous single component product designs, mixture design, and later in the integrated process-product design are reviewed in this paper. Difficulties and possible future extension of CAMD are then discussed in detail. The highlighted challenges and opportunities are mainly about the needs for exploration and development of property models, suitable design scale and computational effort as well as sustainable chemical product design framework. In order to produce a chemical product in a sustainable way, the role of each level in a chemical product design enterprise hierarchy is discussed. In addition to process parameters and product quality, environment, health and safety performance are required to be considered in shaping a sustainable chemical product design framework. On top of these, recent developments and opportunities in the design of ionic liquids using molecular design techniques have been discussed.     

CAI在化工中应用

本文介绍了计算机辅助化学工程教学和生产培训。CAI已在高等院校和化工企业中得到广泛应用,主要包括试题库、仿真系统、多媒体技术等。作者通过CAI和传统教学方法的比较展示了CAI的优点。最后,展望了CAI在化工中的广阔应用前景。