Learn the fundamentals of any chemical process simulator software by means of free and open source software as an alternative to Aspen, Aspen HYSYS, etc. We will be using DWSIM (open source and free) and COCO Simulator (freeware) for this course. Material is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

1. INTRODUCTION TO CHEMICAL
PROCESS SIMULATORS
A. Carrero, N. Quirante, J. Javaloyes
October 2016
DWSIM Chemical Process Simulator

2. A. Carrero , N. Quirante & J. Javaloyes
Introduction to Chemical Process Simulators
2
Contents
Monday, October 3rd 2016
 Introduction to Sequential – Modular Steady State Process
Simulators
 Get used to working with DWSIM and COCO
Monday, October 10th 2016
 Simulation of Chemical Reactors
Monday, October 17th 2016
 Simulation of Distillation Columns
Monday, October 24th 2016
 Case studies

3. A. Carrero , N. Quirante & J. Javaloyes
Introduction to chemical process simulators
3
Ethylene Glycol Production
http://www.chemsep.com/downloads/data/EG_IECR48p10840.fsd
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ie901037w

4. A. Carrero , N. Quirante & J. Javaloyes
Introduction to chemical process simulators
4
Ethylene Glycol Production
Kinetics in COCO
k1 = exp(13.62-8220/T)/60/1000*C(Water)*C("Ethylene oxide“)
k2 = exp(15.57-8700/T)/60/1000*C("Monoethylene glycol")*C("Ethylene oxide")
K3 = exp(16.06-8900/T)/60/1000*C("Diethylene glycol")*C("Ethylene oxide“)
k4 = exp(16.3-9000/T)/60/1000*C("Triethylene glycol")*C("Ethylene oxide")
W + EtO  MEG k1
MEG + EtO  DEG k2
DEG + EtO  TEG k3
TEG + EtO  TTEG k4

5. A. Carrero , N. Quirante & J. Javaloyes
Introduction to chemical process simulators
5
Pressure Swing Distillation of Acetone-Methanol
Ind.Eng.Chem.Res. (2008) 47 pp. 2696-2707

6. A. Carrero , N. Quirante & J. Javaloyes
Introduction to chemical process simulators
6
Ammonia Synthesis
Conversion = 40%
DP = 100 bar
DP = 100 bar
SynGas
7000 kgmole/h
280 ºC
25.5 bar
S2
P = 274 bar
S4
T = 481.9 ºC
S3
S5V
S6
T = 26.85 ºC
S7
Purge = 1% S7
NH3
Rec1Rec2
S5L
Q comp 2
Q comp 1
Hydrogen 0.7371
Ammonia 0
CO 0.0024
Argon 0.0027
Methane 0.0103
Nitrogen 0.2474
Ammonia is produced by reacting nitrogen from the air with hydrogen. Hydrogen is usually obtained
from steam reformation of methane, and nitrogen is obtained from deoxygenated air. The chemical
reaction is shown below:
2 2 33 2N H NH
Our goal is to produce a simulation for the production of ammonia using DWSIM. A diagram and the
data needed to simulate this process is given below.

7. A. Carrero , N. Quirante & J. Javaloyes
Introduction to chemical process simulators
7
Ammonia Synthesis

8. INTRODUCTION TO CHEMICAL
PROCESS SIMULATORS
A. Carrero: alba.carrero@ua.es
J. Javaloyes: javaloyes.anton@ua.es October 2016
DWSIM Chemical Process Simulator