The gPROMS platform
A unified modelling and solution platform for digital design & operations
The gPROMS® advanced process modelling platform is the powerful equation-oriented modelling and optimization framework on which all of PSE’s gPROMS products are built.
It is a single software platform that provides all core capabilities for digital process design and operations applications, from formulation and R&D through engineering design and manufacture to product performance, for diverse process industry sectors.
Because all products are built on a single common platform, they provide a consistent user experience, ease of training and low total cost of ownership.
gPROMS platform capabilities – at-a-glance
gPROMS platform is a feature-rich, next-generation equation-oriented modelling and solution environment that brings many major advantages over traditional process simulation software. Key features include:
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Materials modelling
- Molecular & ionic species
- Complex species & mixtures
- Gas, liquid, solid phases
- Phase & reaction equilibrium
The gPROMS advantage
gPROMS’ next-generation advantages derive from four key capabilities that are at the heart of advanced process modelling:
- The ability easily to capture IP and corporate knowledge within models, using powerful custom modelling capabilities combined with state-of-the-art process model libraries to create process models with a high degree of predictive fidelity.
- Extensive capabilities for integrating models with data, by fitting empirical model parameters (such as reaction kinetic parameters) to laboratory data, or integrating plant data with predictive models to create digital process twins.
- Advanced analytical and optimization techniques that go well beyond the usual steady-state and dynamic simulation – for example, global system analysis (GSA) and large-scale MINLP optimization – to provide a true digital design capability.
- Deployment capabilities that make it possible take advantage of the power of models across the organisation, using the gPROMS Web-based Applications Platform (gWAP) or gPROMS Digital Applications Platform (gDAP).
These capabilities enable gPROMS products to go well beyond existing process simulators, providing a new generation of advanced applications that enable you to create competitive advantage as never before.
The features described below are either integral parts of gPROMS products, or can be added as options.
Process modelling power
At the heart of the platform is its ability to represent to a high level of fidelity using first-principles models.
Multi-scale modelling power
The gPROMS platform provides a hierarchical structure that supports multiscale modelling, meaning – for example – that it is possible to create a reactor model that takes into account all phenomena from mass transfer in the catalyst pore to full-scale equipment effects simultaneously.
Custom modelling
Using the feature-rich gPROMS language you can create new process models easily, to capture and deploy valuable corporate knowledge in an easily-maintainable form. You simply write down the physics and chemistry relationships representing your process – there is no need to specify how they are to be solved and no programming is required.
Flowsheeting
The gPROMS platform’s drag & drop flowsheeting capabilities mean that you can easily combine library and custom unit models within a full process flowsheet. The hierarchical structure means that flowsheets can contain sub-flowsheets to any depth.
Many physical property options
The platform links to a range of physical property options, including KBC Multiflash rigorous multi-component physical properties, the DIPPR database (2000+ components), PSE’s state-of-the-art gSAFT advanced thermodynamics, OLI Electrolytes properties, CAPE-OPEN properties, user-provided properties and others.
Operating procedure TASK language
A hierarchical task language means that it is easy to describe operating procedures, including start-up and shutdown and complex batch operating policy. Dynamic optimization can be applied to procedures to determine optimal operation – for example, to minimise start-up time.
Scale-up support with CFD
The gPROMS-CFD Hybrid Multizonal interface combines the power of gPROMS and CFD modelling to provide ultra-high-accuracy models for model-based scale-up and other operations where mixing effects are important. It is applicable to both single-phase and multiphase (gas/liquid/solid) equipment such as crystallizers and polymer reactors.
Solution power: one model, many activities
Once you have constructed a gPROMS model, the gPROMS platform allows you to perform many different activities – steady-state and dynamic simulation, steady-state and dynamic optimization, parameter estimation, state estimation – using the same underlying model.
Steady-state and dynamic simulation
The gPROMS environment naturally supports both steady-state and dynamic simulation within the same environment, using the same underlying models. Sophisticated workflows allow you to move from one to the other easily.
Parameter estimation
Industry-leading parameter estimation capabilities allow you easily to fit empirical model parameters from multiple sets of steady-state and dynamic experimental – laboratory, pilot or operational – data to create models with a high degree of predictive accuracy. Estimates of parameter uncertainty are also provided for identifying poor data or for use in risk analysis.
Powerful MINLP optimization
The gPROMS platform’s unrivalled optimization capabilities allow you to optimize whole process flowsheets involving tens of continuous and/or integer (discrete) decision variables in steady-state or dynamic optimization mode to come up with truly optimal process design and operations.
Global system analysis (GSA)
Unique GSA capabilities allow you systematically to explore the process decision space, including performing sensitivity and uncertainty analysis to minimise technology risk. GSA utilises the power of high-performance computing (HPC) on multiple cores or cluster machines where necessary.
This helps to leverage investment in modelling, and creates new sources of value within the organisation.
Environment & architecture: equation-oriented power
gPROMS has a sophisticated modern architecture – an equation-oriented framework with published, open interfaces – that provides a powerful and flexible framework.
Because gPROMS has an equation-oriented – as opposed to sequential modular – architecture it has many advantages over existing simulation and modelling software. Simulations involving complex recycles can solve in seconds, opening the door to many advanced applications such as whole-plant optimization and process synthesis.
This is augmented by high-performance solution techniques capable of solving the largest problems rapidly and robustly.
Numerical solution power
gPROMS numerical solution techniques are leaders in their class and under continual development. They are specially designed to handle the simultaneous solution of the large number of equations (often hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions) that can result from a first-principles modelling approach.
High-performance computing (HPC)
gPROMS’ high-performance computing (HPC) capability provides users with the ability to execute large-scale optimization and other models on local multicore machines, in HPC clusters or via cloud Internet-as-a-Service (IaaS).
Deployment options
In addition to using gPROMS via the gPROMS Process and gPROMS FormulatedProducts® desktop environments, it is possible to export model for use in other environments:
gPROMS Digital Applications
The gPROMS Digital Applications Platform (gDAP) is a comprehensive framework for implementing high-fidelity predictive models online within the plant automation system. Developed in conjunction with major chemical companies, the gDAP takes care of data exchange, data processing and validation, co-ordination of different calculations, and transfer of results between calculation modules.
gPROMS Web-based Applications
The gPROMS Web-based Application Platform (gWAP) is used to deliver complex models to ‘non-modeling’ users such as operators, engineers, chemists and scientists and purchasing personnel, via an inter-active web-based environment including integrated dashboards.
Model library management
The gPROMS platform provides comprehensive facilities for developing and maintaining models and providing them for use across the organisation, helping to increase the return on modelling investment.
Project environment
All elements of a modelling project can easily be accessed and maintained via a project tree structure, within a comprehensive project environment. Alternatively you can switch to a palette view to access libraries of model icons when building a flowsheet.
Model publishing
Having written a custom model, you can add a public interface – defining an icon, stream ports, specification dialogs and so on – so that models can be provided in libraries to other users within the organisation. They can then be used like any other library model.
