PROCESS SYNTHESIS AND SIMULATION STRATEGIES FOR INTEGRATED BIOCHEMICAL PROCESS DESIGN

The aim of this collaborative project is to develop an efficient compu tational tool to synthesise a number of plausible initial flowsheets a nd carry out further detailed process analysis by process simulation. An integrated biochemical process synthesis, design and simulation met hodology has been identified and is under development within the above two Universities. The combinatorial natural of the synthesis problem prohibits the complete evaluation of all the alternatives by flowsheet simulation. We focus on developing an efficient approach to eliminate the non-plausible options in the early design stage to minimize the s ize of the synthesis problem. The ease of separation based on the diff erences in properties among components of the mixture is exploited by the key driving forces related to corresponding separation techniques. Separability ratios are computed to be used by a pattern matching alg orithm to systematically evaluate the separation feasibility between c omponents and separation methods. The simulator DYNSIM is being modifi ed for use on biochemical processes for evaluation of plausible flowsh eets. Mathematical models for unit operations found typically in bioch emical processes are being implemented. A cell model approach, in whic h the bioreactor is divided into number of inter-related cells, provid ing the option for heterogeneous mixing simulation, is implemented in DYNSIM. Appropriate numerical techniques for the solution of the set o f differential and algebraic equations representing a bioreactor and m odel simplification techniques will also be implemented.