Group contribution based process flowsheet synthesis, design and modelling

In a group contribution method for pure component property prediction, a molecule is described as a set of groups linked together to form a molecular structure. In the same way, for flowsheet ”property” prediction, a flowsheet can be described as a set of process-groups linked together to represent the flowsheet structure. Just as a functional group is a collection of atoms, a process-group is a collection of operations forming an ”unit” operation or a set of ”unit” operations. The link between the process-groups are the streams similar to the bonds that are attachments to atoms/groups. Each process-group provides a contribution to the ”property” of the flowsheet, which can be performance in terms of energy consumption, thereby allowing a flowsheet ”property” to be calculated, once it is described by the groups. Another feature of this approach is that the process-group attachments provide automatically the flowsheet stream properties, which serves as very good initial estimates for convergence of mass/energy balance calculations.