192 Chemical Engineering Education IS PROCESS SIMULATION USED EFFECTIVELY IN ChE COURSES?

Process simulators are becoming basic tools in chemi-cal engineering programs. Senior-level design projectstypically involve the use of either a commercial simu-lator or an academic simulator such as ASPENPLUS, ChemCAD, ChemShare, FLOWTRAN, HYSYS, and ProII w/PROVISION. Many design textbooks now include exer-cises specifically prepared for a particular simulator. For ex-ample, the text by Seider, Seader, and Lewin[1] has examples written for use with ASPENPLUS, HYSYS, GAMS,[2] and DYNAPLUS.[3] Professor Lewin has prepared a new CD-ROM version of this courseware giving interactive self-paced tutorials on the use of HYSYS and ASPEN PLUS through-out the curriculum.[4,5] This paper will analyze how effective it is to include com-puting (particularly process simulation) in the chemical en-gineering curriculum. Among the topics of interest will be vertical integration of process simulation vs. traditional us