Hass V., Kuntzsch S., Gerlach I., Kühn K., Winterhalter M., 2012, Towards the Development of a Training Simulator for Biorefineries, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 29, 247-252.
Biorefineries are one of the future components for sustainable industrial production. They consist of highly interacting unit operations. In order to efficiently run biorefineries, sophisticated operational strategies and control mechanisms must be applied, which requires an intense training of plant operators and engineers. In order to train process handling and control a training simulator can be used. With this simulator also new control schemes and operational strategies may be tested prior to application in the real plant. Towards the development of a training simulator for a full biorefinery three single unit simulators, i.e. for bioethanol fermentation, a distillation process and a biomass power plant have been created. A new software structure, using router technology in combination with the open source script software AutoHotkey enables the combination of the single unit simulators to form a complex interacting process. The presented biorefinery simulator offers a new methodology for the training of plant operators as well as the development and testing of complex “whole plant” process operation and management strategies.
