A Flowsheet-Centered Architecture for Conceptual Design

摘要

The current state of design support in chemical engineering is characterized by numerous software tools developed for specific purposes. For an improvement of process design, an integration of software systems into a coherent, but not monolithic environment is needed. In this paper, a flowsheet-centered integration architecture is proposed, that - in contrast to commercial solutions - takes into account the central role of flowsheets in chemical engineering design. A novel flowsheet editor has been realized as the center of such an architecture, which allows the creation and management of hierarchical flowsheets for various design alternatives in different versions on different levels of detail for a variety of applications in the design process. It has an open architecture for data exchange with application tools and is integrated with a coordinating workflow component.