Integrated Economics
Integrated economics from AspenTech makes powerful economic estimation software (the ICARUS system) accessible and available to process engineering from within the Aspen HYSYS and Aspen Plus process simulators.
The Challenge
Process engineers increasingly are called on to predict the economics of the process designs they are proposing. The barriers to achieving that, in a traditional workflow, are several. First, simulation tools typically do not provide a way to account for the relevant costs of a process. Second, involving the estimating department to provide costs for a process option introduces significant time delay in the conceptual design. As a result, designers are only able to consider a small number of process alternatives from an economics point of view. Consequently, the most profitable alternative is often not studied or selected.
A New Way of Work
AspenTech has addressed this challenge with a breakthrough solution for process engineers. The sophisticated economics system, Aspen Process Economic Analyzer (formerly called IPE and based on the ICARUS cost modeling system) has been fully integrated with process simulators through a simple system, such that the process engineer can simply activate and invoke the economics system and obtain a reliable relative cost estimate for a proposed process design in minutes. The workflow and interface of this solution has been carefully designed and tested with input from several of our largest conceptual engineering customers, to fit the work process of the typical process designer.
The net result: an extremely powerful tool to enable optimized process designs.
Estimator’s cost analysis available within Aspen HYSYS and Aspen Plus
(click the image to enlarge)
