Concurrent Engineering Reactor Design

A system of softwares was developed in order to aid chemical reactor operation and design, as a tool to define operational policies and support process engineers. A C++ software, using artificial intelligence techniques, acts as an Expert System, guiding the user throughout reactor simulation and providing results in an easily comprehensible form. A Fortran software was used to simulate a reactor, including a neural network algorithm to estimate the rate of reaction. The C++ environment works together with the Fortran reactor simulator and a Fortran neural training software. This linked structure is considered part of the “concurrent engineering” study area. As a case study, the Expert System was applied to a fixed bed reactor for ethanol oxidation to acetaldehyde, over a Fe-Mo catalyst.