To: MortenA
Yes, sir. I believe that 95+ % of the work required to be done by most chemical/petroleum engineers can be accomplished in any one of the major commercial simulators. However, some of the major issues confronting the average user are:
(1) Robustness, reliability, and execution speed of the products, e.g., for complex fractionation problems
(2) Ability to handle and converge large recycle dominated systems, especially when one has very many components in the flowsheet. Good examples are gas plants, petrochemical plants (ethylene crackers, styrene, etc.)
(3) Ability to handle non-ideal mixture thermodynamics, which is vital for complex chemical systems
(4) New developments in simulation technology and algorithms
(5) Ability to write tailor-made reports (including post-simulation calculations) and tables from within the simulator. This capability is most valuable for importing data into other packages (e.g., for process equipment design) and other software (e.g., Excel for other types of analyses)
(6) Ease of setup and use, quality of diagnostics, restart capabilities, etc.
I'm sure others will have many additional criteria to add to this list. The situation that faces the typical beginner is that the claims and counter-claims for each major commercial product are very confusing and often contradictory. Also, their relative performance can be remarkably different on a given class of problems. Since productivity is the key issue in all commercial enterprise, a united forum to encourage such discussions would be helpful.
I say this because a real need exists for such open discussions, in my opinion. For example, a major recent and excellent textbook discusses numerous process simulation issues, providing example solutions using three major products. However, it provides little or no guidance on the kinds of issues outlined above.