Reaching Out Northwards

Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital, was the site of the first joint GEA/INOSIM workshop on process simulation that took place on November 6, 2018. More than 20 international experts from the chemical, pharmaceutical, biotech, and other industries and from academia met there. Their aim was to understand how current needs and challenges in process design, analysis, and optimization can be addressed with modern process simulation. Networking and discussions with like-minded experts in a relaxed atmosphere were further results of the day.

Simulation is an essential tool to make sure that production processes generate maximum benefit while being resource-efficient and robust. This was the main lesson of the meeting.

• Lars Voigt (GEA Process Engineering A/S) gave a comprehensive introduction to digitalization innovation projects that are currently underway at GEA, many of which rely on simulation as well.
• After lunch, Torsten Hellenkamp, Head of Consulting at INOSIM, described how INOSIM simulation software and services can be used to guide industrial producers towards efficiency. He used a large-scale engineering project that is currently underway at a pharma customer of INOSIM to illustrate that simulation is a key element of all phases of the engineering process:
  • In the basic engineering phase, INOSIM simulation is used to provide quantitative decision support for the core process layout and scheduling based on analyses of the achievable throughput, process timings, unit utilization, and potential scheduling conflicts.
  • In extended basic engineering, simulation provides decision support for the full plant and operations design, based on e.g. validated throughput analysis under uncertainties such as random fluctuations and equipment failures.
  • In the detail engineering phase, simulation is used to fine-tune process operations and interactions, to determine resource consumption and staff demands, and even to guide the development of automation systems.

The discussion following the lectures included summaries of methodologies that can make even very complex processes easily tractable in INOSIM, including modular model design and simulation results analysis. The workshop concluded with an information market at which the attendants were able to network and discuss their challenges with simulation experts, and to see simulation in action with live demos.

We are looking forward to repeating events such successful as the GEA/INOSIM workshop on process simulation, bringing together experts and engineers from all fields of process industries.

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