Issues Encountered With Students Using Process Simulators

Process Simulators has become an indispensable tool for design and retrofit of refineries and petrochemical plants. Originally created for the commodity industry, the advantages provided by these tools have made them also an attractive option for other industrial application such as pharmaceutical and specialty chemicals. Software companies are constantly increasing the capability of simulators to include novel technology and expand their applications market. In the last twenty years simulators have also become much more user friendly and have been expanded to incorporate equipment design and costing tools. As a result, Chemical Engineering programs throughout the nation started using them for a variety of reasons. Some professors see process simulators as a must-do-must-teach so students are familiarized with their use by the time they graduate. In this case process simulators are generally introduced during the senior design sequence or simply in plant design courses. Others have found in process simulators a valuable teaching aid as well. At Rowan we introduce process simulators starting at freshmen year and use them as a pedagogical tool in several courses throughout the curriculum. This process has allowed us to develop valuable examples and case studies to show students of the importance of reality checks and the immediate consequences of “blindly” trusting the process simulators results. Examples applied to system thermodynamics, distillation and reactor design will be shown.