Chemical Engineering August 2021 - 20

Focus
Focus on Software
Enterprise-level software
simplifi es data management
Last month, this company launched
its Plantweb
Optics Data Lake
Emerson Automation Solutions
(photo), an enterprise-level datamanagement
software solution that
helps manufacturers reduce data
complexity so that they can fully leverage
operations data across a production
site or from multiple sites to
improve profitability enterprise-wide.
This new advanced data-management
solution securely identifies, collects
and contextualizes
disparate
Chemstations
data, at scale, either on-premises
or using cloud technology. Today,
this valuable manufacturing data is
often in different formats and siloed
across a plant, posing significant
impediments to a company's digital
transformation initiatives. By effectively
unifying this data, companies
can establish a sound data foundation
that can be leveraged by various
digital solutions. - Emerson Automation
Solutions, Austin, Tex.
www.emerson.com
Run simulations faster with this
software
Materials Design
Independent Risk Management Systems
Computing power has increased
significantly since the early days of
process simulation. However, CPU
clock speed is not the driving factor
anymore; it is number of cores.
The ability to parallelize calculations
to all the available CPU cores, as
CHEMCAD NXT (photo) can, is the
key to running orders of magnitude
faster than before. Using CHEMCAD
NXT's Simultaneous Modular SQP
Optimizer (which includes mixed-integer
variables), companies can build
optimizations directly into simulations
they are already using for their work.
Most chemical engineers are familiar
with flowsheeting in a simulator, and
most also understand the principles
of optimization. Engineers also need
confidence that the optimum found
by the model is the global optimum.
CHEMCAD NXT handles this by parallelizing
a large number of starting positions.
Multiple restarts are performed
until several solutions converge within
set tolerances. Therefore, CHEMCAD
NXT's calculation speed increases
18
the odds of finding the global optimum
in a reasonable amount of time
and each simulation run is extremely
fast. The improvement in run-time
for a complex optimization is on the
order of 7-10 times faster from singlethreaded
to six-core calculation. Machines
with more cores will give relatively
similar performance increases,
depending on simulation complexity.
- Chemstations, Inc., Houston
www.chemstations.com
New software includes ML for
designing materials
Last month, this company released
MedeA 3.3 - Material Intelligence
(photo). With the integrated and intuitive
MedeA Environment, researchers
build quantum-mechanical descriptions
of systems using VASP 6, create
machine-learning (ML) based potentials
to capture the resulting energy
surface, employ these descriptions in
large length and time scale simulations
using the LAMMPS package, and analyze
results interactively. MedeA 3.3
includes updates to key server codes
including: VASP 6.2.1, LAMMPS29Oct20,
and GIBBS 9.7.4, increased
platform support, and a range of performance
enhancements and productivity
features throughout. Additional
enhancements facilitate the evaluation
of vibrational entropy contributions to
system free energy, model construction
and editing improvements, and
enhanced and extended parameter
sets for atomistic organic (PCFF+) and
mesoscopic systems. - Materials
Design, Inc., San Diego, Calif.
www.materialsdesign.com
New pipeline integrity and
budget-optimization tool
The Pipeline Integrity & Budget Optimization
Tool (PIBOT; photo) is a new
modular software package that reduces
time and cost associated with
carrying out a diverse range of pipeline-integrity,
engineering and management
activities via data management,
integration and smart data analytics.
This software solution makes it possible
to instantly clean, structure, align,
standardize and visualize data, in addition
to carrying out pipeline integrity
management and smart data analytCHEMICAL
ENGINEERING WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
AUGUST 2021
http://www.chemstations.com http://www.emerson.com http://www.materialsdesign.com http://WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
Chemical Engineering August 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering August 2021
