Assay Synthesis Changes in Version 4
V4 incorporates significant upgrades to the assay synthesis technology and how it is integrated within Petro-SIM. Most of the changes are behind the scenes, with the effects being that:
- All streams have assays, with distinctions between pure component streams without assays, water streams with and without assays and refinery streams with assays all gone
- Streams used with refinery operations can include many more pure components alongside the hypothetical. You can choose whether this extra component detail appears in your component slate or is retained within the assay for use when needed. (The components that appear in your component slate should be matched to the fidelity you need in the modeling.)
- Assay property synthesis results better match measurements
- Transitions from one fluid package to another understand the assay and all its component detail, whether that detail is exposed in the component slate or not. For example, so long as the starting assay contains sufficient detail, you can take a refinery stream using hypos in the naphtha region and transition it directly to a BTX slate
- Streams can synthesize their feed assays directly with no need to use the Refinery Plant to Crude operation
- Streams like Reformer Feeds can have compositions defined in terms of pure components like MCP, Cyclohexane, Benzene and Toluene or can use PONA group compounds like C6N, C6A and C7A. (Note that synthesis understands that C6A contains Benzene but may also contain heteroatom species like sulfur and nitrogen bearing benzenes).
- Reactors can generate significantly greater component detail in the naphtha region with C6 to C9 paraffin and aromatics isomers.
- Synthesis understands many of the property distribution rules and mechanisms used in the SIM reactor technology, improving the consistency between what happens in the flowsheet and what happens inside each reactor.
Architecturally we have made a lot of changes under the hood to facilitate the above with the result that pre-V4 cases take some time to load as the program migrates data to the new structures. You will notice that all V4 cases include a Synthesis Set component slate: this is automatically managed and contains all the pure components and compounds available to synthesis. It is common across all assays and fluid packages in the case.
You can find more detail on specific topics: