Chemical Plant Simulation on Cray Research Supercomputers: An Industrial Success Story

With the goal of demonstrating the advantages of supercomputer simulations for process design and operations, Bayer AG recently teamed up with Cray Research to perform plantwide dynamic simulations of an entire Bayer production facility in Leverkusen. This paper presents project results and benefits from both a computational standpoint and a Bayer company perspective. Regarding computational aspects, special attention is focused on the performance of the process simulation software (SPEEDUP from Aspen Technology). SPEEDUP on Cray Research systems features new sparse matrix technology, vectorized residual calculations, and parallel asynchronous data transfer for exploiting the full capabilities of supercomputer architectures. From Bayer's perspective, the collaboration clearly demonstrated that plantwide dynamic simulation using SPEEDUP on a supercomputer provides a powerful and valuable extension to traditional process engineering activities, and most importantly, delivers tangible financial benefits to the bottom line.