This event has been postponed until further notice, and will not run on March 12, 2020.

Mathematical modeling is an important tool in the chemical process industry. Mathematical models are the backbone of chemical process simulations which are in turn used for the design, control, and optimization of chemical processes. Many process modeling tools exist to aid in this task, and each are useful for their own specific tasks. However, existing mathematical modeling software is typically not built with both optimization and process dynamics specifically in mind. In fact, most existing software uses legacy infrastructure, incorporates black box approaches in which models are hidden, or relies on algorithms and frameworks which were developed for a time in which computing power and memory was more expensive. Although research methods have been developed to exploit as much usefulness from this software as possible, in most cases, the software has been pushed to the absolute limits of its capacities. Optimization is particularly problematic, in that the most modern and state of the art research advances in optimization cannot be used with existing model frameworks because their legacy designs are simply not suited to it. 

Therefore, the IDAES framework is currently being developed by the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. IDAES is an open-source, public domain modeling framework built upon Python and Pyomo (covered in the Workshop on Optimization Techniques for Data Science in Python and Julia). It is being designed from the ground-up with dynamics and optimization in mind. By integrating the flexibility of Python with the optimization capabilities of Pyomo, IDAES is an excellent framework for developing models which help answer some of the hardest problems with regard to process design research, such as optimal design, control, and operation problems, within a steady state or dynamic context. 

In this workshop, attendees will learn how to use IDAES for the development of chemical process models through guided tutorials and examples. Topics include creating dynamic process flow sheets by introducing and connecting model library components, solving optimization problems, and creating custom models which can be incorporated into flowsheets and libraries.

For more information about IDAES, see https://idaes.org.

Resources Needed for This Workshop

Users should being a web-enabled laptop or tablet. Users will have the option of installing the necessary software or using a cloud-based service through their browser.

[Software Installation Link TBD]

Schedule

TBD