7 replies to this topic

Hello,

does anybody know links or sources for a comparison of the available
physical property possibilities of the following simulators:

CHEMCAD
UNISIM
PROII

Thank you for your help.

mgsim

[joerd]

They all have the most commonly used physical properties, plus quite a few exotic ones. Is there a property in particular that you are looking for?

Hello joerd,

thank you for your answer. The reason is, we are currently in search for simulation programs for university application, that means teaching and research. Standard
information of the above programs are quite rare or difficult to find. We are in contact with the companies but I tried to find additional information.

mgsim

[joerd]

mgsim,

I am not aware of such a comparison, and I doubt if it will be of much use to you. In universities, I have most often seen Aspen Plus, Hysys or ChemCad, but I'm sure there are others. My approach would be to call the simulation companies and have them demonstrate their product, and give you a trial version, so that you can see if it meets your needs. You can then also see how well they respond to your interests and questions. In my opinion, that is what distinguishes process simulation programs these days, apart from price.
I would like to promote PDPLUS here, from Deerhaven Technologies, because it has great instructional value, being keyword based instead of graphical, so it is easy to debug and to teach the concepts.
Another good one is VMGSim, developed by the original HYSYS team, with very good technical support.

[Zauberberg]

VMGSim is an excellent machine, a little bit dusty outside but with very powerful engine. I had an opportunity to test it and I can say all the best. Actually, the only remark from my side was not-so-user-friendly environment like in Hysys. But, I guess it is because I have spent more than 5 years with Hysys and it's very difficult to get myself being familiar with other software products. Anyhow, I recommend VMG to everyone:

http://www.virtualmaterials.com/

ChemCAD is a university software, and very much unreliable for various industrial simulations. That is my experience.

[skanovo]

I've recently gone through the process of testing copies of HYSYS, AspenPlus, UniSim, ProSimPlus and Pro/II (yep, I couldn't find a review anywhere - there is a classic series of documents referencing a comparison that showed AspenPlus as the best, but the original reviewers actually made the decision because they already had it licensed and saved money by not getting new software). The companies provide trial versions quite readily, some downloaded and some mailed hardcopies. I've probably signed my life away in the license agreements, so I will keep it pretty brief. Basically, they all have similar thermo packages, I gather a lot of them are 3rd party sourced with a smattering of modifed versions that the companies have added for colour. ProSimPlus (French company) has membership of some of the thermo development projects, so claims to have a bit of a jump on including revisions for some of the cutting-edge packages.

Some comments for teaching use:
ProSimPlus was originally university sourced but is quite a nice package to use and has decent academic rates, including research as well as teaching rates. Little impact outside Europe, but some big companies there use it and provide feedback to improve it. UniSim and HYSYS appear as almost exactly the same package, but UniSim does have some expansion of features like allowing more components and some extra solids handling unit operations. They both have academic teaching rates, but I don't think they have special rates for academic research. I think it is pretty widely stated that AspenPlus and Pro/II are a bit less than user-friendly, so probably not great for part-time users. The ease of use of HYSYS, UniSim or ProSimPlus mean that a decent student should be working on them with only a brief tutorial or some relevant examples, so could test a wider range of cases fairly quickly and evaluate the best options. Personally, I would prefer to have them working on the process optimisation rather than trawling through menus trying to work out how to get the software to run.

I haven't had any experience with the other packages available.

Andrew

[vicini]

They all use NIST for physical properties, so why pay any more than you have too! Go to www.winsim.com best bang for the buck, easiest to use.

[djack77494]

I think it is pretty widely stated that AspenPlus and Pro/II are a bit less than user-friendly, so probably not great for part-time users.

Not to me it's not. While we all have our preferences, justified or not, I have not found any justification for the above statement. I actually would put ProII above some of the other "more user-friendly" competitors. It's been a long time since I used AspenPlus, but when I had been using it, I thought it was similar in "friendliness" to its competitors. These guys might possibly be doing a bit of leap-frogging, where the latest version puts each half a step in front of its competitors.