Some simple & practical instructions are defined to help you through the selection and minimize the possibility of problems. Therefore, when building a model in any process simulator, we need to make a selection of the proper thermodynamic system. This approach is based on traditional chemical engineering laws and thermodynamics represent the essence of it. However, when talking about process simulation, most of the time we do refer to rigorous models and simulation tools, such as Hysys, Chemcad, Pro II etc. Examples are applications of artificial neural networks, linear regression etc. In this case we are not looking into details of the system, only using the data to build the model. We don't need to know all that's behind in cases we are performing a simulation based on a large number of data sets and are using their relationships to build the model. at least we don't necessarily have to know all the details, but we have to be aware of it. Well, in some cases, we don't necessarily do. why do we need to know thermodynamics at all to be able to perform a simulation? We will try to give some simple and practical instructions through this highly complex field of chemical engineering and process simulation.īut, let's go from the beginning. So, our knowledge becomes very important in selecting the most appropriate thermodynamics package. With more complex thermodynamic systems, there comes a joint problem of more and more challenging mathematical operations.
Chemical engineering as a field is progressing day by day and as a result of that the number of thermodynamic equations and parameters is increasing too with the aim to improve mathematical descriptions of different systems. When developing a process model, a chemical engineer should have enough knowledge to be able to choose from a large number of thermodynamic systems. But in the unideal world, things are far from that. If it somehow could be a simple one and the world would be ideal – we would have only one nice equation that is good enough to describe any system. The story about thermodynamics can hardly be a simple one.