Open-Architecture Modeling And Optimization Of A P-Xylene Oxidation Reactor

Computer-aided modeling and simulation technology always play significant role in chemical process development and cost evaluation. As primary designing tool for chemical product manufacturing process development, simulation software comprises of components with diverse functionalities. Thus the simultaneous cooperation between different modules especially varying in providers and computer languages, will considerably improve the simulation performance. With rapid development of system engineering and process manufacturing techniques, it has become the trend to intensify the openness of Process Modeling Environment (PME) and interoperability of Process Modeling Components (PMC). CAPE-OPEN (Computer Aided Process Engineering OPEN) standard takes the initiative in the componentization technology and interface standardization. The open interfaces seaming software modules from different sources greatly promote the efficiency of process simulation. This standard has been extensively recognized and applied by primary software vendors and academic organization.Purified terephthalic acid (PTA) is the important raw material for polymer industry. Its process technique is well known for complex reaction kinetics, thermodynamics and transfer characteristics. This thesis focuses on open architecture process component design:the core model of PTA manufacturing process --- p-Xylene (PX) oxidation reactor operation unit, is reformulated to conform to CAPE-OPEN standard; the simulation environment is divided into different components, and COM based software interfaces are implemented for communication between the modules. The comprehensive work in the thesis lays solid foundation for development of innovative open manufacturing simulation platform. The main research highlights are as follows:1. Mechanism of oxidation section in PTA process is studied and simplified. The kinetic factors are encapsulated in Middleware (Windows Dynamic Link Library file) so that users are only able to see the operational parameters other than mechanism factors, which flexibly protects crucial parameters of the model.2. Equation Set Object (ESO) of PX oxidation reactor is constructed and the problem's Degree of Freedom (DOF) is analyzed; an innovative simulation framework is proposed based on different subsets of the ESO. Interfaces for both sequential and equation oriented simulation modes are implemented respectively.3. Within open architecture simulation platform Aspen Plus, experiments based on field conditions are designed to test the convergence and precision of the module. The validation is carried out on both module scale and flowsheet scale, covering the wide range of operation conditions. The experiments provide innovative perspective to first-principle modeling.4. The CAPE-OPEN Oxidation Reactor is applied to PTA production monitoring and optimization system, which was deployed as open architecture simulation platform in real-time manufacturing process. The simulation results and methods to promote computation efficiency are analyzed.