DISTILLATION CALCULATIONS OVER THE NET K. Jakobsson1, K.I. Keskinen1,2, J.

Aittamaa1 Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, Address: Kemistintie 1 M, POB 6100, FI-02015 HUT, Finland. Email: Kaj.Jakobsson@hut.fi, fax: +358-9-451 2694 2 Neste Jacobs Oy, POB 310, FI-06101 Porvoo, Finland Recently we have set up a WWW service for our process simulator FLOWBAT (and some other related software) [1]. One of the advantages of this set up is that the user is not bound to any particular time or computer when doing simulations. We have used the service successfully in our basic unit operation courses and in some more advanced distillation and reactor design courses and in research projects. The service is also open for the use of the chemical engineering community in general. To run the program the user needs a computer with a text editor and access to the Internet. The I/O system is based on text files. The user prepares an input file using an ordinary text editor and then sends it to the server via our WWW service and gets the results of the simulation as an email. Thus connection to our WWW server is required only for a short moment when the input file is transferred. We have not encountered any particular problems in delivering the results in this way. The results have been available to the user more or less on line. The WWW service includes pages devoted to support the user by providing the manuals and other related material including a number example input files of successful simulations. The server is a standard PC using LINUX as the operating system. FLOWBAT is a steady state full feature flowsheet process simulator with all typical components such as library of unit models, thermodynamics, physical properties, databank, optimisation, etc. It is worth to mention that in addition to conventional unit models the program includes a number of specialised unit models resulting from research projects. They represent the high end of unit modelling. The software is available for the user as it is. We have only restricted the databank in the WWW version to 1000 components and limited the execution time. FLOWBAT has several models to simulate distillation. DISTIL is a one-column distillation program where the column can be divided into any number of sections where column diameter, internals/plate type and size can vary from section to section. Although equilibrium stages are default, multicomponent point and plate/packing efficiencies can be estimated and thus real plates/packing can be used in the simulation model. Hydraulic calculations are also available for several plate and packing types. Also, reboiler non-idealities can be accounted for. RDISTIL is a model for reactive distillation that is also based on real plate concept. COLUMN (also named ABSORBER, STRIPPER) uses different solving algorithm and does not include a condenser. RRDISTILLATION solves a combination of reactive distillation and side reactors process simultaneously. (DESIGNER uses rate-based concept for reactive distillation simulations, not in web version yet). References: [1] http://www.hut.fi/Units/ChemEng/WebFlowbat/index.html
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