2009 R&D 100 Winner
To develop new processes, engineers in continuous process industries turn to process simulators, which use the laws of thermodynamics, chemistry, and chemical engineering principles to carry out mass and energy balances for each unit of equipment in a plant. While previous process simulation software tools featured databases with thermophysical property data of 1,500 to 3,000 pure components, the NIST SOURCE Data Archive features an electronic database storing essentially all experimental thermodynamic data known to date with detailed descriptions of relevant metadata and uncertainties. The database, combined with expert system software in Aspen Plus 2006.5 with NIST ThermoData Engine (TDE) from Aspen Technology, Inc., Burlington, Mass., and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, Colo., is designed to automatically produce recommended property models based on available experimental data and a set of prediction methods, enabling on-demand generation of critically evaluated data. The current version of the SOURCE Data Archive includes more than one million experimental data points for thermophysical properties of pure compounds (nearly 4 million for all types of chemical systems).
Technology
Software
Developers
Aspen Technology, Inc.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
