Simulation In Early Stage Process Development

Simulation tools are frequently used in process development.  When properly applied, they can provide powerful results, such as the evaluation of many flowsheet alternatives in a short amount of time, and numerical calculation and representation of the complex chemical system.  When used for process development, there are challenges.  One concern is the limited availability of  the properties of new chemical systems and mixture properties for previously not evaluated systems.  Key questions that help to focus the efforts are “What is the simulation objective?”, and “What is the process development objective?”