Process Engineering

Flowhseeting in general, flowsheet approaches. Equation solving approach and numerical methods of searching zeroes. Iteration and convergency. Decomposition based on bipartite graphs or occurence matrix. .Assignment of design variables, assignment of design and tearing variables. Sequantial modular approach, input-output models, calculation sequence, tearing streams, maximal cycles and power iteration of adjacency matrix. Graph exploration with spanning tree. Simultaneous modular approach in general, quasi-linear models, linear submodels, signal-flow graphs and their equivalent transformation.

Phase equlibria in general, modelling with equations of state and with excess models. Particular forms of necessary conditions of phase equilibrium of mixtures. Most applied equations of state, inclusion of composition into the equations, fugacity expression dependence on actual state variables. Most widely applied activity models, their parameters's applicability for interpolation and extrapolation. Activity coefficient expression dependence on state variables. Poynting correction. Model parameter fitting. Thermodynamic consistency check of measured equilibrium data.

Typical flash calculations: buble point and dew point calculation and distribution calculations with different conditions and modelling approaches. Heterogeneous bubble point calculation. Trivial solution at liquid phase distribution, and its avoidance. Check of the necessary condition.

Detailed modelling of steady state multistage countercurrent separation processes, based of staged column approach. Simultaneous and decomposing methods, specification, estimation of initial values. Simplified calculations.

Calculation of transients. Euler and Runge-Kutta methods, forward and backward differentials. Stiff equations.

Modelling processes with distributed parameters. Types of boundary conditions. Methods of finite differences. Methods of weighted residuals, moments, collocation, Galerkin. Finite elements.

Short outlook to the problems and methods of process synthesis. Hierarchical process design.

Optional, depending on the progress in the actual semester:

Industrial cost estimation. Basic methods of numerical minimization.

Computer practices:

Series 1: Modelling phase equilibria. Model selection, calculation and visualization of phase curves of binary homogeneous systems. Parameter search in literature. Parameter fitting. Modelling heterogeneous systems, calculation of isoterm liquid phase equilibria and visualization in ternary plots. Exploration of azeotropes.

Optional, depending on the progress in the actual semester:

Series 2: Detailed calculation of rectification of near ideal multicomponent homogeneous mixtures. Visualization, evaluation. Specification changes.

7. Method of education: