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The decline in chemical industrial participation is not necessarily related to the decline in interest or importance of thermodynamics

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zhanzhan
The decline in chemical industrial participation is not necessarily related to the decline in interest or importance of thermodynamics

ppppd (Properties and Phase Balance of Product and Process Design) is one of the most famous international conferences in the field of applied thermodynamics. It started in 1977 and has continued to the present. In terms of attendance, the initial goal of these meetings was to have a balanced representation of colleagues from academia and industry. In his review of these meetings up to 2013, O’connell27 demonstrated how this balance was initially maintained, but since 1989, industrial participation has declined significantly. That year, 58 of the 215 attendees were from the industrial sector, and 101 of the 211 attendees at the 1980 conference were from the industrial sector. In 1998, 53 of the 231 participants attended the conference, while only 14% of the participants in the 2013 conference attended the conference.

The decline in chemical industrial participation is not necessarily related to the decline in interest or importance of thermodynamics. Changes in external parameters and company strategy and other parameters may have played a role.

In his book, O'Connell also summarized some of ppppd's industrial priorities. At the first meeting (1977), there was a Krolikowski-Buck (Union Carbide Company) speech. He put forward an industrial viewpoint on phase equilibrium technology and commented on how to always add new models to the internal simulator. But none of them were deleted. At the same meeting in 1977, Larson's industrial review pointed out that there was no enthalpy characteristic and heat capacity model, which made him "uneasy." He emphasized that the strategy to obtain these resources is "urgently needed" and we cannot wait another 40 years to build a good database for the oil industry.

At the 1980 meeting, Nagel (BASF) mentioned that many successful models "enable us to deal with most of the engineering tasks we face", but there are still some challenges, such as electrolyte solutions across the entire range of conditions. At the same meeting, van den Kraats (Shell) was not satisfied with the performance of models such as NRTL and UNIQUAC, because they used valley-based parameters for LLE, which would cause problems for valley-based separation (such as LL extraction).

Nearly 20 years later, in a thesis published at the 1998 ppppd conference, de Swaan Arons pointed out: "The success of thermodynamics in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries seems to have played a rebounding role." There seems to be a common belief in the industry. , I think that every balance and every nature can be calculated or predicted, and the need for experimentation has almost disappeared. If such a need arises, then computer simulation can take over this task. "We will see later in this article. Although more than 20 years have passed since the 1998 conference, this is not the case, as the industry itself said. We still need to experiment!
As a follow-up to the previous investigation, the working group decided to strengthen its interaction with industry by holding a series of seminars on industrial applications of thermodynamics "IUT". Four such seminars have been held in the past ten years, and each seminar includes a round table discussion where industrial partners can freely express their concerns about their needs. In each case, the abstract of the discussion will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The first IUT was actually named "InMoTher" (Industrial Applications of Molecular Thermodynamics) and was held in Lyon in 2012. It gave rise to OGST (Oil and Gas Science. Technol.-Rev. Scholarship Energy Novella. 2013, 68, 187-215). This editorial (https://doi.org/10.2516/ogst/2013l20) puts forward some conclusions of the round table discussion. Some interesting issues are pointed out, such as the need to adapt the model selection to the process life cycle (screening of various options or final design). It also defines a benign triangle relationship, which encourages collective cooperation among academia, software vendors, and industrial end users. Finally, we need to pay attention to the derivative and transport properties.

The second IUT meeting was part of the ESAT meeting held in Eindhoven in 2014. The minutes of the round table meeting have been published in the journal Chemistry. Eng. "Economic Research" (2014), p2795-2796. Through the use of predictive tools or through appropriate measurements, it is necessary to understand the behavior of fluids under extreme conditions (high pressure and temperature, but also high dilution or complex composition). Concerns have been raised about the diversity of closed laboratories and certain models (SAFT): they can only be used in industrial applications with appropriate parameterization.

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