Parallel dynamic process simulation of a distillation column on the BBN Butterfly Parallel Processor computer

Abstract

Parallel computing on multiprocessor computers having numerous independent processors has in the past generally not been explored for chemical engineering applications. As a first step in quantifying the speedup that multiprocessor computers can have on dynamic process simulation, rigorous dynamic computations for a DYFLO (Franks, 1972) process model of a methanol and water distillation column were parallelized and computed with up to 14 concurrently operating processors on a BBN Butterfly Parallel Processor computer and compared with simulation results from single processor simulations. Performance aspects on a parallel computer are discussed and speedup as a function of number of independently operating processors is reported. Results suggest that parallel computing has significant potential for speedup of dynamic simulation codes if interdependent information flows can be decoupled and if computational tasks can be generated continuously over a time stepped simulation.