Abstract

This thesis describes part of the work that has been done in the Chemical Process Engineering Laboratory of the University of Oulu to systematize conceptual process design. The aim has been to develop a design methodology, i.e. how process design is done, based on a carefully elaborated concept analysis. The starting point has been that all the knowledge related to process design, i.e. not only the procedural knowledge related to the design activity itself, but also the declarative knowledge related to the design target (process) and the environment (project) in which the design is done, should be systematized. The process design methodology can be represented within a single formalism by treating the activity, target and resources as structural parts of the project object. In that case, each design decision becomes properly constrained by the goal and the resources available, and is also stored together with the domain knowledge on which the decision was based. This holistic approach was adopted when the phenomenon driven process design methodology was built to systematize chemical process development while simultaneously supporting creativity.

This thesis concentrates on knowledge generation activity as part of the phenomenon driven process design methodology. A brief description of the generic chemical process object model is presented, after which the focus is on the design activity and the strategy of design. The phenomenon driven process design of an MTBE production process is described as an illustration of the methodology. It is shown how combinations of reaction and separation, such as reactive distillation, evolve naturally during a design project.

For the evaluation of attainable state distributions, which is an important design task implied by the methodology, a robust method was developed to solve the modified MESH equations of reactive distillation. The method was also applied when developing a rigorous calculation method for the determination of minimum energy demand of multicomponent distillation.