Computer aided methodology for simultaneous synthesis, design & analysis of chemical products-processes

Abstract A new combined methodology for computer aided molecular design and process flowsheet design is presented. The methodology is based on the group contribution approach for prediction of molecular properties and design of molecules. Using the same principles, process groups have been developed together with their corresponding flowsheet property models. To represent the process flowsheets in the same way as molecules, a unique but simple notation system has been developed. The methodology has been converted into a prototype software, which has been tested with several case studies covering a wide range of problems. In this paper, only the computer aided flowsheet design related features are presented.