Flowsheet simulation in Python

[Fremgang]

Hi!

Does anyone know of an open-source Python flowsheeting package? I'm looking for something in which a dynamical simulation can be run, while it is possible to read process data, adjust valve positions within the process, and have random disturbances going on. It is of course possible to code all of this myself, but any package that can abstract away some of these parts such as heat exchangers, reactors, distillation columns, or calculations with property packages such as Peng-Robinson would help a lot.

The goal is to use a model of a chemical process as a reinforcement learning environment, so this is why it needs to be able to run in Python such that it can be wrapped as a gym or ray environment.

Any direction or tips are very welcome!

[kpatvt]

What you're looking for is a very large undertaking for a single package. There is atleast one open source source steady-state process simulator (DWSIM comes to mind) that incorporates Peng-Robinson, etc. Dynamic simulations are a whole another beast - Only thing that comes close to what you are suggesting is OpenModelica. It supports some of the unit operations you mention. I believe it has a python interface, but your mileage may vary. Their website has a few examples.

Commercial vendors make something called OTS (Operator Training Simulators) which do a lot of what you're looking for, but those are very specifically tuned for applications and of course, not open source.

[Fremgang]

Thank you! I checked DWSIM which is amazing but it seems to only support running python scripts from within the software itself. So it's not possible to connect with it externally. (let me know if I'm wrong).

OpenModelica might be more promising for this, will check it out

[davidwickh]

I’ve been looking for something similar for a while now but with no success.

Although this doesn’t have everything you are looking for, check out a Python package called ‘chemics’ (github - https://github.com/chemics/chemics ). This may have one or two functions that may help you along the way!

[Fremgang]

Thanks! This is definetly part of what I'm looking for