Welcome to Petro-SIM Version 4.1 - BETA Product builds

SIM Suite 4.1 Status

SIM Suite 4.1 is going through its final release testing prior to release shortly. It contains many new features and enhancements with highlights below.

  • We have made a significant upgrade to the Heat Exchanger unit operation through enhanced calculation methods, new utility for monitoring network performance and tracking fouling and enhanced links with HTRI.
    • New HX Monitor Utility (requires extra license) that provides methods for calculating and tracking fouling in heat exchanger networks, together with simulating the benefit of cleaning individual exchangers, groups of exchangers or the whole network.
    • Upgraded Steady State Rating method to incorporate the Bell-Delaware method for calculating heat transfer coefficients
    • Enhanced fouling calculations to support HX Monitor
    • Reports results through TEMA spec sheets
    • Offers tight two-way integration with HTRI Xist model
  • We have enhanced support for performance monitoring with this release, adding more reporting functionality to the Excel framework and simplifying the building process by adding functionality within Petro-SIM. In particular:
    • New KPI Utility to allow you to create key performance indicators. It supports built-in, customizable status indicators to track case completion as well as any user-defined indicator incorporating flowsheet parameters.
    • The Historian interface has been upgraded with Script Tags allowing tags to be calculated based on other tags
    • It is now easier to build basecases through the Data Reconciliation utility and KPI Utility instead of having to set up separate spreadsheet operations
    • We have enhanced reporting through Excel with simplified user interface for occasional users checking results plus significantly improved charting and trending options for results analysis
  • Reactor Process Technology enhancements:
    • Revamped ISOM-SIM reactor offering auto-calibration and tuning of key reactions and more robust temperature response predictions
    • Enhanced hydrogen balance options in FCC-SIM
    • Better default coke on catalyst response for CCR reactors in REF-SIM, reducing the need to calibrate this response if data is inconsistent or unavailable
    • New options for cold property shifts across hydrotreater and hydrocracker reactors
    • New Coker Furnace object for use with Delayed Coker simulations, allowing more detailed analysis of the Coker Furnace.
    • Enhancements to the Visbreaker and Fired Heater family which includes the VGO Cracker and Coker Furnace objects, providing:
      • Coking kinetics to enable coke laydown prediction and tracking
      • New tuning factors for Coke and Tube Metal thermal conductivity
      • Enhanced reporting for vapor and liquid properties on a tube by tube basis, adding Density, Viscosity, Thermal Conductivity and Heat Capacity to both liquid and vapor phase reporting plus wt% vaporized.
      • New flux option that allows you to provide a flux profile
      • Support for heat losses through negative fluxes
    • Enhanced reporting from Pyrolysis Furnace (OLEFIN-SIM)
  • Rx usability improvements and Excel interface improvements
    • More flexible Optimizer Input page
    • Profiles charts function to plot multiple profiles (distillations, tube profiles and so on) on the same chart
    • Revised charts variable layout and zoom functionality
    • Enhanced calibration factor loading options, allowing you to export factors to any reactor of the same type in any Petro-SIM case
    • Required Feed and Product stream properties for the reactor workbook now highlighted on the Input pages
    • Option to check for gross mass balance errors during Validate
    • Historian import options to pull multiple data sets into Excel
    • Recent files list on the Petro-SIM Ribbon
  • Calibration system enhancements to simplify use:
    • Publish and Subscribe mechanism for unit calibration data enhanced with support for public and private revisions, allowing you to test your changes before you make them public to all subscribers
    • Easier understanding of calibration setup through PFD highlighting
    • Method to support yield properties, allowing you to enter yields instead of flows for use in calibration
    • Data reconciliation upgrade improvements – includes:
      • User interface revamp
      • New options for specifying measurement error (Relative, Absolute, No Error, Estimate from Balance)
      • Component balances for light ends
      • Heat balance mechanism to support HX Monitor
      • Reporting upgrades
  • Enhanced support for dynamic simulation, bringing the proven dynamic simulation capability of Petro-SIM 3.3 into the latest version. Dynamic simulation can now handle refinery assays, allowing easier transition from steady state refinery simulations and expanding capabilities around fractionation dynamics for analyses like crude switching studies.
  • Column enhancements
    • You can now add multiple components to a range of specifications on component flow, fraction, recovery and ratio
    • Easy Thermosyphon reboiler setup through options on the Column wizard
    • Easy Liquid bypass support and setup through options on the SideOps wizard
    • Smarter auto reset and restart during calculations
  • LP Utility enhancements
    • Submodel validation with automatic comparison of submodel-predicted value versus flowsheet-predicted value for all datasets collected by the LP Utility
    • More robust regression calculations
    • Ability to specify display order for streams and properties used in generating LP tables
    • Support for long LP tag names in auto-generated tables and templates
    • Ability to re-run and collect a single dataset to aid analysis of datasets with convergence issues
    • Automatic retry mechanism for datasets that fail to converge by stepping back to basecase before retrying at dataset conditions
  • Basis and Oil Manager enhancements to simplify handling multiple assays, improve technology and features
    • Oils button on toolbar allows direct access to a pre-built Oils basecase without having to load a specific case
    • Import Haverly HCAMS assays directly with zero configuration (requires that HCAMS is installed on your computer)
    • Enhanced change management options for assays on Petro-SIM databases with support for public and private revisions and easier configuration of case runtime checks for assay updates
    • Bulk Process options to let you work with multiple assays at the same time
    • Cetane D4737 properties now support A and B calculation methods
    • Added further detail to the extended component scheme, expanding the C6 to C8 Olefins groups with specific isomers including Di-Olefins and adding isomers to the C9 and C10 Aromatics groups
    • Added support for Cape-OPEN Thermo packages supporting the Cape-Open 1.1 standard
  • General UI and related improvements
    • Preferences revamp with reorganized view and changes to unit set handling to simply use with spreadsheets and minimize proliferation
    • Improved font and Unicode support, with change to default font to fit Windows 7 standard
    • Enhanced dropdown buttons with default click actions
    • Send to Favourites option to allow you to add shortcuts to the case Navigator pane
    • You can pin files to the most recently used file lists, allowing you to keep your favorite files in easy reach
    • Trace commands for extended components available on stream composition right-click menu
    • Enhanced multiple monitor support, enabling you to drag windows outside the Petro-SIM frame by holding the Control key down while dragging the window with the mouse
    • User-controllable matrix cell action on pressing the Enter key, letting you specify how the active cell position should move
    • Enhanced tooltip information on density and viscosity properties in stream views to help you determine the calculation basis
    • Ability to add custom stream types through Preferences to help you manage property selection on stream Property pages. Use custom types when you want more granularity than the built-in types provide.
    • Mechanism added to allow you to generate and email shortcuts to database cases
    • Enhanced translation support to cover greater range of refinery unit operation messages
    • KnowledgeBase Editor to let users customize content without requiring specialized knowledge of XML
    • Added support for the SQLite database engine, making it the default database engine for single user application. SQLite is a widely used engine supported on a wide variety of platforms from mobile phones to server computers.
    • Added support for the COBYLA optimization algorithm, where COBYLA is an implementation of MJD Powell's nonlinear derivative–free constrained optimization that uses a linear approximation approach. This algorithm expands the library of solvers available to Petro-SIM.

You can read about some of the great features in Petro-SIM 4.0 here.