c
 






The purpose of this and the following pages is to introduce you to the primary tool that you will be using
in the design classes, HYSYS. Now HYSYS comes with a number of excellent reference and tutorial
manuals. The Design Lab should be equipped with two complete sets of the manuals. Each set contains the
following books:  
,  
 ,  , c   ,  

, and
 

. PLEASE do not remove these from the room. The same six volumes may be
accessed electronically in Adobe Acrobat format either from the start menu as shown below or via the
World Wide Web.

 
 and   are available at http://www.hyprotech.ab.ca/support/dox.htm. The

c    book is available at http://www.hyprotech.ab.ca/support/examples/hysysappexamp.htm. It is
far easier to look at the actual books than to worry through the Acrobat Reader, so, again, please don't take
them from the room. Note that all referals to manuals are in yellow and if the manual in question is on the
HYSYS web page, like the Tutorials Book, then the reference will also be a link.

Because I don't believe in duplication of effort (especially my own), this web page is intended to be
complimentary to those manuals. Here on the web page, I hope to fill in the blanks left by the books, serve
as a quick reference for some items, and give pointers and links as to the places in the manuals to look
immediately for the answers to your questions. Most importantly, however, these pages will provide you
with the tips you will need to get your specific tasks done on the specific computer system you will be
working with and with this specific version of HYSYS. These tips will include information for both
CENG403, where you learn to design individual units, and CENG404, where you will design an entire plant
(in fact, this is the only place that you will find many tips for 404, so don't forget to come back and read
them again when you start needing them). HYSYS is not the best program for group work (Aspen isn't any
better believe me), therefore an entire section has been devoted towards teaching you the best way to work
in groups. By the way, NT will allow two different users to edit the same file at the same time. This is bad.
If you do this, only one person's work will get saved.
c
 
c



The goal of programs like HYSYS and Aspen is, of course, to provide you with the capability to design
an entire process as completely and accurately as possible. Most (though not all) of the differences between
the two lie in their user interfaces. Having gone through the design class with Aspen, I am of the personal
opinion that HYSYS has a much better and intuitive interface than Aspen. You have the option of using
either simulation package, but I recommend using HYSYS unless you run against something that only
Aspen will do. I will try to warn you of all the limitations of HYSYS that you might encounter in advance.

Unlike Aspen, HYSYS does not wait until you've entered everything before beginning calculations. It
always calculates as much as it can at all times and results are always available, even during calculations.
Any changes that you make to the data are automatically propagated throughout the program to anywhere
that entry appears and all necessary recalculations are instantly carried out. It tends to be a lot easier to catch
errors this way as you build your simulation. However, there are times when you will not want HYSYS
calculating the entire flowsheet over again every time you make a small change. Hence, the existence of the
    . While you are in one environment, calculations in the other environments are placed on
hold. Every V
 (as HYSYS calls each individual simulation file) has two or more environments. The one
that contains all the items you expect to see, the streams, unit operations such as reactors, separators,
columns, mixers, etc., and various utilities, is the   
    . At the top of that environmental
hierarchy (and the only one required) is the 
     and the !
"#. (Aside: both the
name "Case" and the tag "Main" are defaults and can be changed in the "Main Properties" view under the
Simulation menu). Though the entire simulation may be placed in the Main flowsheet, columns and
templates are automatically brought in as $"#. Sub-flowsheets can be thought of as modular
programs. You can have as many as you like, nested as deep as you like (though you tend to not need to put
additional sub-flowsheets under a column flowsheet).

The other environment, and the one you actually have to deal with first when you start a case, is the
 
    . The basis environment is the place that you define the thermodynamic package you
wish to use (Peng-Robinson, Margules, etc.), the components that will be used in your simulation and any
reactions that may occur. If dealing with a Petrochemical application, there is also an  
     that
may be reached only from the basis environment.

There are two files that HYSYS reads whenever you start HYSYS. One of these is the Preferences File,
the other is the workbook format file. The preferences file tells HYSYS many important things like which
units you want to use, where to look first for your stored files etc. You can have multiple preference files
saved (or you can just build up various unit sets, etc., in one file you alter upon need), but the one that is
loaded upon startup is the file named
#%%&
in the directory from which HYSYS is started. If you
launch HYSYS from your start menu, your user's profile has been configured with '(
%% as the start
directory (note that if you are not in a design class group, you won't have a Y drive, because the purpose of
theY drive is to save group work). If you look at the contents of that directory you will see, in addition to
some other stuff, that I have placed a #%%& file in there for you. That is the file that must be overwritten
if you want to make changes to your default preferences (though changes are automatically saved to the
preference file when you save your simulation, so overwriting should not often be necessary).
You may have noticed the other file I put there, #%%&". That file is responsible for the appearance of
your workbook. The workbook shows you the contents of every stream in your process and the connections
of every unit (if you really wanted to you could make your entire simulation using the Workbook and never
even look at the PFD). Without the #%%&"
file, unless the file has undergone changes to its workbook
which got saved with that particular case, the default is for the workbook to only show two pages: 
and ) 
*. Now, if you've done any reading of the manuals or working of the tutorials you were
propably expecting four pages: ! 
,    , + %
, and ) 
*. The
Workbook is much harder to work with without the extra info these pages provide. The file I provided
restores these other pages, but again it is only automatically loaded if the Start Menu was used to launch
HYSYS.
Why am I telling you all this? Because there are a number of cases where you will not be able to use the
start menu to do what you want. If you start a file by double clicking it (your simulations should all be
stored under '(
%%( ), without a #%%& file present, HYSYS will use the default file located on
the NTserver called
. It is not configured for you and you cannot save changes to it. HYSYS will
also fall back on that file if you do not have a Y drive. Moreover, any time you want to run one of HYSYS'
or my example files, because of a failure of HYSYS to handle links or networks well, the only way you'll be
able to see Hartsook (where all the sample files are located), is to double-click on one of your own files
(causing HYSYS to "start in" a directory on Hartsook), then turn right around and close that file. Then, you
may Open the example file. Note that HYSYS' examples are located in ((
(
%%(c!,+, not
in c+ as the manuals say, and that my examples are located in ((
(
%%(c!,-./.
What ever you are trying to do, if you used one of the above methods, HYSYS will not open with the
correct Preference File. The O
 

 once HYSYS opens is open ,  under the
 Menu. Then press 
, 
&&& . Load '(
%%(
%%&. At that point you may or may
not need to import your workbook format. Push the Workbook button , on the toolbar to find out. If
you do need to, then choose  under the 0 Menu and import the file #%%&" under
'(
%%.

Note: Should you somehow create a

%%& file under your  directory, DELETE or move it, as you
will not be able to get to the example files on Hartsook with it there. An automatic way of telling if your
preference file is based on the one I started you with or if it is HYSYS' default is the color of the
background. HYSYS' preference file makes the background the same brown color as your desktop. My
preference file uses a deep purple as the background color.

Return to the HYSYS Page | Return to the CENG 403 homepage

   




There are currently five different types of reaction that may be simulated in HYSYS and a number of
reactor types that they may be used with (and one special reactor that does not require any equations).
Reactions may also be used in Columns and Separators (though there are some limitations on the phases
that may be used by the reactions in those cases). The five reaction types are as follows:

Conversion
This reaction type does not require any thermodynamic knowledge. You must input the stoichiometry and the
conversion of the basis reactant. The specified conversion cannot exceed 100%. The reaction will proceed until
either the specified conversion has been reached or a limiting reagent has been exhausted.
Conversion reactions may not be grouped with any other form of reaction in a reaction set. However, they may
be grouped with other conversion reactions and ranked to operate either sequentially or simultaneously. Lowest
ranking occurs first (may start with either 0 or 1). Just as with single reactions, simultaneous reactions cannot total
over 100% conversion of the same basis.
Conversion reactions cannot be used with Plug Flow Reactors or CSTRs. In general, they should only be used in
Conversion Reactors.

r
ilibri

Equilibrium reactions require that you know some sort of relation between the reaction's equilibrium constant,
†eq, and temperature. You may specify Keq in a number of ways:

R cs a constant. Enter either Keq or Ln(Keq)

R cs a function of Temperature. You specify c
in the equation below

Ln(Keq) = c + B/T + C*Ln(T) +
*T

Y IMPORTcT: o matter what the units in your preferences, the T's used for this equation are in †elvin and
thus your coefficients c
must be adjusted accordingly if the T's for the information you have are not also in
Kelvin. If it becomes complicated to do so, you might choose to generate a table of K vs. T and enter that as
tabular data.
R cs tabular data of Keq vs. T (as suggested in the note above and from which HYSYS fits the above equation)
R Have HYSYS determine Keq from the Ideal Gas Gibbs Free Energy Coefficients. This is similar to, but not
exactly like what you get by attaching any equilibrium reaction to a Gibbs Reactor (which just takes the
stoichiometry). The difference depends on the property package because the Gibbs reactor will take into
account any non ideal behavior predicted by a thermo package such as Peng Robinson. cn essentially ideal
thermo package like cntoine would give almost exactly the same results for the two different methods.
R You may also search for the reaction among the pre defined reactions in the HYSYS library (reached from
the ëibrary Page of the Equilibrium Reaction window)

Supposedly, like Conversion reactions, equilibrium reactions may be calculated either sequentially or
simultaneously. I actually did not see any means by which reactions might be designated sequential and
suspect an error in the reference manuals in stating that it could be so. Equilibrium reactions also cannot be
used with Plug Flow Reactors or CSTRs. In general, they should only be used in Equilibrium Reactors or
General Reactors. They can, however, also be used in the special Gibbs Reactor. When a reaction set is
attached to a Gibbs reactor, the stoichiometry involved in the reactions is used in its calculations.

†inetic
cll three of the remaining reaction types can be considered kinetic, in that they
deal with an expression for the rate of the reaction.
ifferentiating between the
three becomes simply a matter of formulation. In this first and simplest form, the
rate equation is the one to the left (this picture is taken from the harameters Page
of the Kinetics Reaction window). The first term on the right hand side refers to
the forward reaction, the second term to the optional backward reaction. The k's are the reaction constants for
which you must enter on the Parameters Page the activation energies, E and E', and the pre exponential factors, c
and c' (which are basically all of the constants lumped out front). The basis functions are not just functions of the
Base Component (which you set on the Basis Page see Chapter 11 of RV1 for an explanation of the Base
Component or anything else having to do with reactions), but are the products of the concentrations (or partial
pressures, etc.) of any of the reactants or products to whatever power (negative numbers and decimals are fine).
For example, it just so happens that for the reaction

CO + Cl2  COCl2
the rate law might be rCO = k[CO][Cl2]3/2

You actually enter the form of the basis functions on the first page,  # %, of the reaction window.
In the columns to the right of the one in which you enter the stoichiometric coefficients, you must enter the
forward and reverse order. The HYSYS default is to assume an elementary reaction the stoichiometry
parallels the order. Therefore for this reaction you would leave the forward order of CO at 1 and enter 1.5
for the forward order of Cl2. Though it is assumed there is no reverse reaction, you might, if you chose,
leave a 1 for the reverse order of the COCl2. As long as you did not enter a value for the reverse E and A, no
reverse reaction would take place.
The Chemicals Tutorial in the Tutorials Book will take you through an example of the use of a Kinetics
reaction in a CSTR.

†inetic (Rev r 
This form of the rate equation is fairly similar to the standard kinetic
form. The difference is that instead of getting information about the
reverse rate constant, we use the relation:

Keq = kforward/kreverse

or, as is actually substituted into the standard form,

kreverse = kforward/Keq

Of course, in doing so we have implicitly assumed an elementary reaction as that is inherent in the
definition of Keq. Therefore there is no place to enter reaction orders. Keq is determined by HYSYS in the
same it was done for the equilibrium reaction above, except that this time you are forced to enter the data in
the Ln(K') format (again, if that's not what you have, don't despair. Try creating an equilibrium reaction,
defining it how you are able and then copy over the constants that HYSYS generates).
For an example of the use of this type of reaction, see my Plug Flow Example.

ë ng
ir-Hinshelwood
This is the most complicated of all the reaction forms and is therefore the one that is not even mentioned in any
of the manuals (either on line or off). Therefore it falls to me to explain it. I go through all of this in detail in the Plug
Flow Example, so if you decide you do need to use this form, I recommend you work through that.
Langmuir Hinshelwood is mainly used to model heterogeneous catalysis. The rate of reaction is slowed when you
have a finite number of active sites on the catalyst, some of which may become blocked to reaction by the products
being formed. Hence, to the standard rate equation is added a denominator (this is almost exactly like the form for
enzyme catalysis for those of you who have had Biochemistry).

°ener l Infor tion on Re ctions

If you are looking for a step by step instruction on every stage of the creation of a reaction and the use of
reaction sets, you won't find it here. You will find explanations of that stuff in any of my reactor examples
(Plug Flow Example, Gibbs and Equilibrium Reactors, Conversion Reactor), or you may look in Chapter 11
of Reference Volume 1 (does an excellent job with this kind of stuff), or work through the Chemicals
Tutorial in the Tutorials Book. What I am going to list here are the little pearls of wisdom I picked up while
working through the reactions myself and that may or may not be mentioned in the manuals.

1. You do not need to go back to the basis environment every time you want to edit reactions. You can create
or change reactions in the simulation environment using the Reactions Package under the Flowsheet menu.
You cannot, however, import or export reactions except from the basis environment.
2. Modifications can be made to reactions on a specific reactor's property view pages that are local only and
do not apply globally. Local changes always take precedence over the global settings. (ot an option in PFR).
See Section 13.13 of RV2.
3. The components you have in a reaction need not have been previously included in the fluid packages'
component list. When you finally associate a reaction set with the fluid package, whichever of its reaction's
components are not already there will be added then to the fluid package.
4. There are places (such as when entering the kinetics parameters) where you shall find that no matter how
many significant digits you enter in, only 2 sig. figs will be displayed. This is a short coming of HYSYS and will
be fixed in future versions. The extra unseen digits 2
used in the calculations, but the only way to see
them is to export them to a Spreadsheet (using the secondary mouse button, simply drag the number from
 the reaction window to a cell of the àpreadsheet Page of the Spreadsheet).
5. ßnder the àtoichiometric Page of a reaction window, the item called "Reaction Heat" is not the Heat of
Reaction as we know it. In fact, they have opposite signs (an exothermic reaction has a positive Reaction
Heat).
6. Remember whenever defining an Equilibrium constant using Ln(Keq) = c + B/T + C*Ln(T) +
*T, that T is in
Kelvin.
7. HYSYS does not show you the units of the cctivation Energy it displays. If you would like to display it in the
same units you entered, you must go into your preferences set and set the units of Molar Enthalpy to the
units you would like cctivation Energy displayed in, as cctivation Energy does not have its own category.
Reaction rate does have its own category. The Pre exponential factor has the same units as Reaction rate
(the units set on the basis page, OT necessarily the units set in the preferences which seem to only be for
reporting purposes) divided by the Basis ßnits.



Though I plan to tell you about all of the reactors, pay special attention to the info on the Plug Flow and
Gibbs Reactors, as they are the ones you will likely use the most. With the exception of the Plug Flow
Reactor, the property views of the various reactors are essentially the same. You must specify a liquid
and/or vapour product stream for all reactors (again, except for plug flow which has one and only one
product stream). All reactors are assumed adiabatic until an energy stream is attached (at which point some
further specification such as outlet temp or energy input is required).With the exception of the Plug Flow
Reactor and the Gibbs Reactor, all of the reactors also have a number of pages in their property views
related to the reactions in them. There you may make changes to the reactions that only take effect in that
particular reactor. Local changes always take priority over global changes (so make sure you are aware of
whether the change you are making is local or global).

c 

,12
3
*4
,
2  

5

The ,
1"
 can be used with Kinetics,
Kinetics (Rev. Eqm.), or Langmuir-Hinshelwood reactions
(any number and combination of the three types can be used
in the reaction set). An excellent description of each of the
PFR's inputs can be found in Section 13.10 of RV 2. You can
also get a good idea of the way to go about setting up a PFR
in your simulation by working through my Plug Flow
Example.

 

#
,1' HYSYS "integrates" over the length of

the reactor by dividing it into a number of sub-volumes (like a
series of CSTRS). The default is 20 sub-volumes. The most
noticeble effect of this to the user is in the reactor profiles.
The various characteristics are given as values vs reactor
length. The lengths listed are the midpoimts of the
subvolumes. For example, a 10 m length reactor with 20
subdivisions would give profiles starting at .25 m and
incrementing by .5 m (the size of a subdivision), finishing
with 9.75 m. Not realizing this at first I was irritated that the
profiles were not showing me the entering and exiting values
(0 and 10 m). Not to worry, the .25 and 9.75 m values are, in
fact, the same as 0 and 10 m. Everything within a subvolume
is the same (like a CSTR).
Another quirk of PFR is that on very rare occasions (see the
note in the gibbs reactor example). The integration
mechanism gets confused. To fix the problem, try looking at
the    page of the reactor property view. Under
"Initialize segment reactions from:" make sure the $ 
radio button is chosen. Normally, you would not pick this
option as it takes the longest time to run. For details on how
HYSYS handles the three options see Section 13.10 of RV2
(p. 464).
The  can be used with Kinetics, Kinetics (Rev. Eqm.),
or Langmuir-Hinshelwood reactions (any number and
combination of the three types can be used in the reaction set).
An excellent description of each of the CSTR's inputs can be
found in Section 13.13.3 of RV 2. You can also get a good
idea of the way to go about setting up a CSTR in your
simulation by working through the Chemicals Tutorial in the
Tutorials Book. In addition you might want to take a look at
my Case Studies Example, where I build on the tutorial by
adding a case study. I use the Spreadsheet feature to access
the 
  
6 of the CSTR in the tutorial.

 

#
' CSTR is primarily for liquid reactions,

of course, but HYSYS will conduct the gaseous reactions as
well. The less the "liquid" volume, the more of the total
volume available for the vapour phase reactions (i.e. HYSYS
uses the total volume minus the volume you set for the liquid
to calculate the volume of the gas, whether or not any liquid is
actually present in the stream).
The 
 (like the one in Aspen) is unique among
the reactors in that you are not required to enter a reaction set
for it to work. The Gibbs reactor works by finding the
equilibrium state with the lowest Gibbs Free Energy. It
appears to be akin to finding all the possible equilibrium
reactions and allowing them all to equilibrate. It's nice
because you do not need to know anything about the
individual equilibrium constants. On the    page
you can set the production of components or set any of them
 to be inert.
You may also set, on the    page, the Gibbs reactor
to behave like an equilibrium reactor (you must then attach an
equilibrium reaction set, also see 7  below), or like a
separator (no reaction). See the example which will teach you
about the Gibbs reactor, the Equilibrium Reactor, and my
"switch" technique. The "switch" is also mentioned on my
tools and tricks page.
opens
 

#

' There is something Ä
important to note when attaching equilibrium reactions to the
Gibbs reactor. The Gibbs reactor takes only the stoichiometry
of the attached reactions and applies its own free energy
then, minimization technique to it.  components listed as
reacting in the reaction set undergo any reaction. Note that
HYSYS will not allow you to attach a reaction set which
would include all of the possible independent reactions as that
would simply duplicate the effect of setting the reactor to full
Gibbs reactions. The part of this that is important to you in the
design classes is that the results of the Gibbs calculations
come 8% close to the values obtained in the
equilibrium reactor using VV data, while not making use
of any data on Keq. Thus if you need to simulate a reactor in
which you want certain reactions equilibrated, but not others
(for instance, because a certain catalyst is employed allowing
those particular reactions to equilibrate quickly, but not aiding
any other reaction) and yet have no or untrustworthy data on
the equilibrium constants, %



 
#





9 %
+7   
  9
#
 

#
+7   
&
Two postscripts on this: 1) If you use the above technique, it
doesn't matter what you set the equilibrium constant, a fixed
constant of 1 is fine, because you only need the stoichiometry.
2) Before using the above technique, check the equilibrium
reaction library. The one you need may already be there, in
the temperature range you desire (even then, however, the
Gibbs way may still be better).

One last note, there appears to be a minor bug in HYSYS, in

that, when operating the Gibbs Reactor in Equilibrium
Reactor mode, a button appears that would show you the %
conversion, reaction extent, etc. Unfortunately, even when the
Gibbs Reactor had completed its calculations, the matrix
remained blank.

If you would like to experiment with the similarities and

 differences between the Gibbs reactor and the Equilibrium
Reactor yourself, see the example for a good way to go about
it.

The +7   
 uses reaction sets with only,

surprise, equilibrium reactions in it. You can read more about
it in Section 13.13.4 of RV 2. You can also see the example in
which I compare it to a Gibbs Reactor. In general, I
recommend making use of the Gibbs Reactor over the
Equilibrium Reactor.

opens

then,
The   
 deals with, yep, you guessed it,
conversion reactions. You use it when you know how much
of the reactants will be converted into products. As mentioned
in the section on conversion reactions, it can handle multiple
reactions which may be ranked to occur simultaneously or
sequentially. Reactions with the same ranking are
simultaneous and the total conversion of the same reactant
can not exceed 100% (all subject to limiting reagents, of
course). The product of one reaction can be the reactant of
another reaction.

 

#
  
' Though the specified

conversion cannot exceed 100%, the actual conversion can.
This is because the actual conversion is the percentage
conversion over the    amount of base component
present. However, if that base component is the 
V of a
lower ranked (meaning reacts first) reaction, there may be
opens more available than was originally there. This allows the
actual conversion to exceed the specified conversion (it's still
behaving correctly, so don't panic). The conversion could thus
be much greater than 100%. You can see this in my
 conversion example. If none of the base component was
initially present, the actual conversion field will remain blank.
Conversely, if the base component of a reaction is a  V 
then, in an earlier occuring reaction, or if there are limiting
reagents, the actual conversion will be less than the specified
conversion.
If the reaction producing the base component of another
reaction is ranked equally with it, the second reaction would
not convert any of the component produced by the first
reaction, but would only convert the specified percentage of
the original amount present.
Ranking cannot be changed locally in the reactor. It may
only be altered in the reaction set on the global level.
The
 
 is like a combination of the CSTR and
the Equilibrium Reactor. If you put in all kinetic style
reactions, it acts like a CSTR. If you put in all equilibrium
reactions, it acts like an Equilibrium Reactor. The General
Reactor, unlike any other type of reactor available to you, will
also allow you to mix equation types. You can combine
kinetic and equilibrium reactions into one reaction set (you
still cannot combine conversion reactions with any other type,
though you can attach a conversion reaction set to the general
reactor as well). That set will then be a  8 type and can be
attached to the general reactor. Unfortunately, verifying the
accuracy and method is somewhat involved (though not
necessarily difficult). I leave it to you to investigate this.
Rather than create an example for you. This time I simply
added the General Reactor to my file comparing all the other
reactors. That way, you may use all the reactions and reaction
sets that were created for the other examples as a way of
Not Accessible from the Object Palette. exploring the results that the General Reactor gives you. The
Can only be reached via the Unit Ops name of the file is c&# and it is located under
View (obtainable by pressing <F12>, "Add ((
(
%%(c!,-./.
an Operation" under the Flowsheet Menu,
or from the Unit Ops Page of the
 
' A strange problem,
Workbook.
 

#

somehow tied into the number of product streams attached,
results if you try to attach an equilibrium set immediately
after a conversion set. It fails to find a solution even if it had
done so before. If something like this happens to you click off
then back on again the c



"#
 

 button and it should solve.
The same quirks of the CSTR apply when using any
kinetic reactions in your reaction set.
Return to the HYSYS Page | Return to the CEG 403 homepage
  

There are four logical unit ops that are used primarily in steady-state mode. These are +, c2:),
5cc; +, +  +, and the #. The rest of the logical unit operations are used primarily in
Dynamic Mode and will not be discussed here. The Chapeter in the Reference Volumes which covers all of
logical ops is Chapter 14 in RV2. Much of what is said here may also be found there, as well as a more
thorough explanation of each option available.

ahe Sra Oper tion

SET is used to set the value of a specific process variable (PV in the manuals) in relation to another PV.
The relation must be of the form Y = mX + b and the process variables must be of the same type. For
example, you could use the SET to set one material streams temperature to always be 20 degrees hotter than
another material stream's temperature. SET may work both ways (i.e. if the target is known and not the
source, the target will "set" the source).
You can see an example on SET's use that includes an example of the Spreadsheet in my Set Example.
You may also read more about it in Section 14.7 in RV2.

As a small aside. You can use the Spreadsheet to set the multiplier, m, or increment, b, of the SET operation
(similar to what I mention with the ADJUST below). But I don't see much point, since, if you're going to
invoke the Spreadsheet anyway, you might as well just import the source variable, do your necessary
calculations, and export the result directly to the target without ever bothering with SET.

ahe ADJUSa Oper tion

Use the ADJUST operation when you want HYSYS to adjust one variable until a target variable reaches
a user specified value or matches a specification. That source of that specification can be yet a third variable
(of the same type as the target and offset by a constant if you so wish). The Gas Processing Example in the
Tutorials Book uses an ADJUST to vary one stream's temperature until another stream's dew point equals a
specified value.
One irritating little feature is that if you are using another object as the source of the target value, the
menu of objects will include objects that you cannot actually use that way. I tried to connect the results of a
spreadsheet that way, but it did not work.
 You can use the results of Spreadsheets, however (which is good, since it greatly increses the power and
flexibility of ADJUST). It must be done by exporting the variables from the Spreadsheet itself to the
ADJUST. You can export to the target value or to the offset used whenthe target value is another object. If
you export to the target value, the number will appear in the user specified box (the radio button must
therefore be set to that).

Before installing the ADJUST module, it is often a good practice to inialtize the independent variable,
allow the flowsheet to solve, and note the value on the dependent variable. Then self-adjust the independent
variable and make sure that the dependent variable is actually affected by it. This should also give you an
idea of the step size you will require. The step size is set on the , Page and is the initial step size
employed until the solution is bracketed. Note that too small a step size and you may not bracket the
solution before exceeding the maximum number of iterations (you may change that number as well though).
For a description of the rest of the items on the Parameters Page, another example, and a discussion on the
use of multiple ADJUSTs simultaneously (involves a change in the Solving Method), see Section 14.1 of
RV2.

ahe BAëANCr Oper tion

This is one of the most interesting and deceptively useful of the logical units. Remember way back when
you took CENG 301. You had to do Mass and Energy Balances over sections of or entire plants to solve for
unknowns in composition, flow, energy, or whatever. Well, that is what this operation will do for you. You
tell it what streams of material and/or heat are crossing the imaginary boundary into your system of interest
and what streams are exiting. You know that HYSYS shares information both forward and backward
throughout the PFD at all times. However that is not always enough for HYSYS to know when the situation
is entirely specified but in a more unorthodox manner. The !
 


5  example in Section
14.2 of RV2 shows a single stream passed through two coolers in series. Though you know the composition
and the temperature of the stream both before the first cooler and after the second cooler, you do not know
the flowrate or the temperature in between. You do, however, know the duties of the two coolers, which
gives us enough information to figure out the unknowns. The balance is set up so that the two coolers are
the system, which thus has one material inlet stream, one material outlet stream, and two outlet heat
streams. (Note: when setting up balances, even when the flow is negative -- something you are more likely
to see with energy than with material streams -- choose which streams are inlet and which streams are outlet
from the direction of the arrows, into or out of the system, on the PDF. HYSYS will handle the signs
correctly then.)

There are a total of 5 different types of Balance available to you, they are:

R Mole and Heat Balance I mentioned this one already. It is the most commonly used and is good for
calculating OE unknown based on the total material balance and OE unknown based on a total energy
balance. It should not be used in conjunction with a reactor as the balance is on a molar basis. The material
balance is conducted first and will complete even if the energy balance is under (or worse, over ) specified.
Though it does not conduct individual component balances like the General Balance, you may leave the
composition of one stream empty and HYSYS will know how to fill it.
cctually, I am not absolutely sure about this type's limitations. It seems to be able to handle more than
 the manuals say it should (I suspect that it really does do some sort of individual component balance). It was
able to handle the example I made up for the General Balance below, but it couldn't handle the example for
the General Balance contained in the Reference Manuals.
R Mole Balance There is another way to use the Balance Operation. The "system" for which you have inlets
and outlets need not be part of the process at all. You can use the balance to create new streams with
characteristics of streams in your process. In the HYSYS' Gas Processing Tutorial, they use the Mole Balance
to create a stream with the same composition and flow as a process stream, but then they give the new
stream a different pressure and a vapor fraction of 1 to see what the stream's dew point would be
(remember, when you specify vapor fraction of 1 or 0, HYSYS assumes you want u

 vapor or liquid
and solves for the corresponding temperature or pressure).
R Mass Balance The Reference Manual says that this is good for non stoichiometric reactors like alkylation
units and hydrotreaters. The compositions of all streams must be specified and all but one flowrate. Be
aware that the only thing this balance passes is a Mass Flowrate. ote that there is no sort of elemental
balance. You could have five streams of pure nitrogen as inlets and one stream of CO2 as the outlet, and
HYSYS will gleefully pass the sum of the mass flowrates of the nitrogen to the CO2. So, be careful with this
one.
R Heat Balance You know, I'll be honest. I cannot think of a good use for this one, but hey, I can't do all your
thinking for you.
R °eneral Balance This is the really good one. In addition to conducting individual component balances, and
thus being able to solve a greater variety of problems that way, you can specify ratios —
 components
within a stream (unfortunately not between streams). It could even handle inputing flowrates for some of
the components but leaving the rest of the composition <empty, this was a little tricky though. Take a look
at my neat, little example and you'll see what I mean. cs with the Mole and Heat Balance, the material
balance is conducted independently of the energy balance and will complete even if the energy balance is
under (or worse, over ) specified. c warning, though. Either balance may surprise you by making the 

balance overspecified, if you are not watching for that possibility when inputting data.

For all Balances, the balance will not start to calculate until the c
  box is checked, but don't
check it until all is ready.

ahe RrCYCër Oper tion

Use this operation every time you need to recycle a stream. The logical block connects the two streams
around the tear (remember the tear does not have to be the official "recycle" stream itself, but instead should
be the best place in the loop to make the break for convergence purposes). Before you can install the
RECYCLE the flowsheet must have completed. That means there need to be values for both the 
stream and the  stream. Once the Recycle is attached and running, HYSYS compares the two
values, adjusts the  stream, and runs the flowsheet again. HYSYS repeats this process until the two
streams match within specified tolerances.
Those tolerances are set on the , Page. There are tolerances for Vapour Fraction,
Temperature, Pressure, Flow, Enthalpy, and Composition. The tolerances you enter are  absolute. They
are actually    for HYSYS'   convergence tolerances. For example, the internal value for
Temperature is .01 degrees (note that is in Kelvin, because HYSYS does all of its calculations in an internal
unit set), so a multiplier of ten means the two streams must be within a tenth of a degree of each other.
 On the ;  Page, among other things, you may set the RECYCLE to either ; (the Op is
called whenever it is encountered in the flowsheet) or    (all of the RECYCLEs are invoked at
the same time -- use with multiple inter-connected recycles).

There is far more to this Operation. I cannot really do it justice. See Section 14.5 in RV2 for much more
information on the options available to you as well as two excellent examples which include strategies on
reducing the number of recycles and convergence time.

ahe Spre dsheet

You must have noticed me raving about this operation on occaision. This is by far one of the most
powerful and O  of the tools available to you. You may import almost any variable to the Spreadsheet,
do a variety of calculations there (including boolean logical operations like 
&&&
# statements), and then
export results to any specifiable field in your simulation. It serves the same basic Function as the
FORTRAN blocks do in Aspen, but again, no surprise, it's a heck of a lot more user friendly an interface.
Besides reading about in Section 14.8 in RV2 and looking at their example which shows how you may use
the Spreadsheet to calculate the pressure drop across a heat exchanger (at least they calculate the Reynolds
Number), I have made two different examples showing further uses for the Spreadsheet.

One example was mentioned earlier in this page, SetEx. The other example shows how the Spreadsheet
may be used to calculate reaction conversion for use with a Case Study.

In the first example, I import and export via the     Page. In the second example, I do it by
directly dragging the variables into and out of the spreadsheet.

Return to the HYSYS Page | Return to the CENG 403 homepage

 
 
 

On this page I will introduce you to the various tools and tricks that exist to help you make important
decisions about your plant and to help you work as a team. This Page will cover the DataBook, the use of
template subflowsheets, and my process "switch".

ahe D t Book

The DataBook is a tool that lets you record and explore the effects of changing parameters in your
flowsheet. It is especially useful for fine tuning individual units and for optimizing your entire plant. The
DataBook has 5 pages, the first of which is the   Page, where you will define the variables to make
available to the other pages. There is another page, called Strip Charts, that you will not need unless you
enter dynamic mode (which you won't need for 403 or 404), and therefore will not be discussed here. That
leaves three pages, three tools. These are the ,
2
, the 2
, and, I think the
most important one, the 
 .

ahe V ri bles P ge

Before you can use any of the tools in the DataBook, you must first establish here which process
variables you intend to observe or vary.

Use  &&& to add a new variable to the list (the new variable will be added above the selected variable),
+ &&& to, well, edit the selected variable's name or the very choice of process variable itself, and 2
should be obvious. You can choose any process variable to add to the list (see my Case Study Example to
see one of the few exceptions I have found). Pressing Edit or Insert, will cause the Variable Naviagator to
appear. Choose the process variable you want from there.

ahe Process D t a bles

If the process variables in your simulation are like all the various goods in a grocery store, than the Process
Data Tables are like your grocery basket in which you pile only those variables from around the store that
you wish to monitor. Essentially, you just tell the DataBook which of the Variables defined on the Variable
Page you wish to show in the Tables and the Process Data Tables will always show the current values of
those variables. It's a good way of assembling information from all over the flowsheet into one, easy to
view, place. All of the tutorials in the Tutorials Book show examples of its use.

 ' At the time of this writing, the version of HYSYS we are using (ver. 1.2.11) has a bug in the
Process Data Tables. No matter what units it says it is displaying, HYSYS is actually displaying the
variables in its internal units. Thus, at the moment the Tables are not really of much use, but it should be
fixed in the next upgrade.

ahe D t Recorder

Like with the Process Data Tables, the Data Recorder make work with any of the Variables that have
been defined on the Variables Page. The purpose of the Data Recorder is to provide you with a way to keep
a record of your values even after you have changed your simulation, much like taking a snapshot. It is
good for making a benchmark and watching your progress, as well as giving you a record of which
combination of parameter values gave which results.

If you wish to delete an individual entry, delete its title. If you press the 2 button at the bottom, it will
delete the whole Scenario and there is no way of getting it back without repeating the whole chart all over
again.

You will find examples of its use in any of the tutorials in the Tutorials Book.

C se St
dies

I think the most useful of the DataBook tools, the Case Study allows you to quickly vary key process
variables across a range and observe the effect on other key process variables. While you may choose any
number of independent and dependent variables for the Case Study, HYSYS will only plot a maximum of
three variables at a time. One independent variable and one or two dependent variables make a 2D graph
and two independent and one dependent variable make a 3D graph. Should more dependent variables be
included than the one or two allowed for plotting, HYSYS will use for the graph the first one or two
dependent variables that are checkmarked c  on the 2 %
,  Page of the Case Studies
. Check out my example where I show you in greater depth the uses and limitations of the Case Study.

aepl tes nd S
b-Flowsheets

Templates and their use as Sub-flowsheets are going to be the  to your group working as a team on
design. This will be especially true when you get to CENG 404 where you will be designing an entire plant.
You will find, especially in 403 that it is far too easy too let one or two people in the group do all the
simulation work. Don't be tempted, because when you get to 404, it is far too much work for any one or two
people to do. You will be glad if everyone in your group got good practice simulating reactors, columns,
and heat exchangers (as well as all the other ops you will use) back in 403.

Now, since it is so easy for one person to claim a flowsheet, because he or she did so much work on it
that he or she is the only one who 
enough about what is going on  work on it, you must find ways
of either sharing the work or splitting up the flowsheet.

Of course, you could just agree to only work on the flowsheet when everyone is present and hover over
one computer (which might actually work well for 403 if your schedules match well enough). However,
you don't get any division of labor that way. If two people do want to work on the simulation at the same
time, you have to use 
c to make a copy and then there is no way to recombine the work, so one
person's changes must all be scrapped or laboriously transferred over to the other file at the end.

There is another option, but it requires a little forethought. You've seen how when you open the Property
View of a Column, you have the option of entering its Column Environment. Therein you see the column
has its own PFD with streams and units that may be hidden from the main flowsheet. There are two other
kinds of sub-flowheet besides that of the Column. They are the templates that you import in and the sub-
flowsheets that you create in-situ. Once they are installed there is absolutely no difference between them
(unlike with the column, which does have a slightly different form of environment). A template is created
just like any other case (in fact, any simulation can be converted to a template to be used in another
simulation). The only difference is that a little more information is needed to guide HYSYS in transfering
info between the main simulation and the "black box" that is the Sub-flowsheet.
 It is a very modular way of doing things. Even if you don't need to reuse a section of plant or use it
another simulation, the templates are a great way of breaking a complicated flowsheet down into more
manageable chunks. The best part, of course, is that templates are separate files and thus 
%



" 


. One scenario could be to assign a section of plant to each person or a pair
of people and then set someone to coordinate them and put together the main flowsheet (this means a lot of
deleting old templates and then reloading and reconnecting the updated templates, but it is still the easiest
way of putting people's work together).

The above PFD is only an illustration to give you an idea of how you might split up a plant. A real,
working PFD would doubtless have other units on the main flowsheet and at least a few few more and
possibly many more energy streams connecting sub-regions. Not as many as you might think, however. One
of the biggest demands for cross-regional interaction is for heat exchangers and HYSYS already has taken
care of that. HYSYS allows you to place the tube side of a heat exchanger in one sub-flowsheet and the
shell side in another. Thus, there could in fact many streams exchanging energy with each other between
flowsheets and it does not clutter the main flowsheet up (but you might consider making adding text beside
each such heat exchagner to remind you what the other half is without having to open a property view
everytime). I have made a quick demonstration of splitting a heatexchanger between to sub-flowsheets.
There is also an excellent example showing how it can be done between the main flowsheet and a sub-
flowsheet with a refrigeration loop in Section 15.3.4 of RV2.

There are some other issues that must be dealt with when using sub-flowsheets. One of the best features
that the separate environments have is the ability for you to use different fluid packages in each sub-
flowsheet or column flowsheet from the one used for the main flowsheet. For instance you might want to
use an EOS for a Natural Gas Reforming Section and a thermodynamic package more suited for VLE or
LLE in the Separations Section or Columns. Just removing components from a fluid package in areas they
are not needed will reduce HYSYS' convergence time.

Of course, with the ability to use different property packages in different sections of the plant, the
problem of passing information from one region pops up. You know that any two of Vapour Fraction,
Temperature, Pressure, and Enthalpy, plus the Composition of the Stream is enough information for
HYSYS to flash the stream and find the rest of the information. You should expect that the same two
parameters in Peng-Robinson will give different results for the rest of the variables then if the thermo
package were Antoine (an essentially ideal package). So if you need to pass a stream from a flowsheet using
PR to one using Antoine or vice versa, it becomes important to decide which pair of parameters should be
used to flash the stream on the other side. That's what the  
5  is for.

On the  
5  Page of the sub-flowsheet Property View, next to each stream, you may pick one
of the following choices for a transfer basis:

R h H Flash Pressure and Enthalpy Passed (ot Recommended)

R a h Flash Temperature and Pressure Passed
R ðF a Flash Vapour Fraction and Temperature Passed
R ðF h Flash Vapour Fraction and Pressure Passes
R Oone Required othing passed. ormally used for energy streams, though if used for material streams,
will still pass composition (though suprisingly not flow)
R ßser àpecs ßser Specified (to the best of my knowledge, essentially the one Req'd when actually
intended for use with material streams)

I have prepared an example demonstrating the importance of choosing the correct  
5 .

You've probably noted that I have yet to discuss or include in my examples, the means by which you
should actually go about making a template. In my examples, I had you create blank sub-flowsheets to build
on within your cases. When you actually are working on your projects, this is ;* the way you want to do
things. If you start with a blank sub-flowsheet there is no simple way to turn it into a template (there is a
work-around which I will discuss later but it is  pleasant either to do or work with later).

If, on the other hand, you were smart and divided your plant up into pieces early on, you could build the
pieces separately as templates or as separate cases (which may be converted into templates) right from the
beginning. Even if you started by placing everything in the main flowsheet, you are still good because you
can save the file under a new name then delete everything  what you want to put into a sub-flowsheet
and  convert the case to a template.

To show you how this may be done, I am putting a short example right here.

arPëAar rAPër
 Start with ChemicalsEx.hsc in my sample directory or TUTOR3.hsc in HYSYS' sample directory (they
are the same thing). It was the one that looked like this

The first thing you must do is save the file under a new name (you shouldn't be able to write to either
directory anyway). Now, let us pretend that this flowsheet represents not an entire process, but merely a
section of the plant we wish to model. We'd like to convert this case into a template. To do that, go to the
   Menu and choose !
, . Here you can change the name of the case or its tag, or, on
the Notes Page, you can write the description that appears next to the file name in the * dialog window.
However, we are here for the button at the bottom.
Press  

. After HYSYS asks for confirmation and you approve it, HYSYS will close the
case you were working on (it will ask if you want to save it first) and leave open the newly created template.
The template, of course, looks the same as the case except that the file name at the top shows the extension
.tpl instead of .hsc and some new pages have been added to the Main Properties window we have been
working with.

On the +8
    Page, you have a number of options for the default values connected
with the template when you import it as a sub-flowsheet. At the top you may choose the tag it will receive
in the new flowsheet and whether the
O  property package should be that of the template or that of the
simulation it is imported to. You can, of course, change the property package of any sub-flowsheet after it
has been imported from the simulation basis manager.

You can also affect the name of the streams as they will appear on the sub-flowsheet's Property View to
be connected with streams on the main flowsheet and the transfer basis of each stream. Let us put to use the
concepts I taught in my transfer basis example and pick the transfer bases for these streams.
The ; 
7< type is fine for our energy streams, but you'll remember that ,$

1# is definitely
not good for the material streams. The two material feed streams were defined by specifying their
temperature and pressure, so they should probably be set to $,
1#. The three streams exiting the
column are all from the condenser or reboiler and are saturated vapours or liquids. Therefore, they should
be set to 1$,
1#. In general, all direct product streams from a column should be set to either 1$, or
1$
1#. The last product stream, the vent from the reactor is also the result of a flash separation.
Moreover, it had its temperature set directly (via the stream 
,) and so should be set to 1$

1#. Note that the choice of T or P is much less important than the choice of Vapour Fraction as the other
passed parameter in these cases.

You are now ready to install the template as a sub-flowsheet in another simulation case. I hope the
information I have imparted to you makes it easier to turn your projects into real team efforts.

Oh, one last thing on this. If it should happen that you created a subflowsheet from scratch that you
really want to turn into a template, the work around is to save the file under a new name, eliminate
everything from the flowsheet except the sub-flowsheet and the streams directly connected to it. Then, turn
this into a template. This process adds another level of depth (and irritation) between the areas you want to
work with, but it does work.
 ahe Process "Switch"

This is one trick that is not mentioned anywhere in the HYSYS manuals, but it works regardless. If
you've gone through my Gibbs/Equilibrium Reactor Example than you've already seen what it can do.
Essentially there is a way in HYSYS to choose one or another "path" for a flow. Somewhat like a switch in
a railroad track that sends the train to another destination, you can send a stream to more than one unit
operation or section of the plant to evaluate how they compare to each other and then merge the "tracks" on
the other side to see the effect downstream in the plant of using the one over the other.

This is the picture from the example I mention above. You see how the stream appears to diverge then
reconnect. The stream is not actually splitting and mixing. It must go one way or another. In the picture the
Equilibrium reactor is active and the Gibbs reactor is Ignored, but it can be switched easily. To see the
process of setting up a switch, see my example.

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 c
 

As I was learning Hysys myself, I made a number of notes along the way. As I incorporated
what I learned into the web pages, I would remove that item from the list (unless it was
something particularly usefull but short). Below are the remaining items that I didn't find a good
home for in the pages I had time to write. Some of them mention things I wanted to explore and
questions I had left that I did not get the time to deal with. Perhaps, if you find the answers, you
can add to the web pages.

General Notes

1. Note that two different users CAN open the same file on two different computers at the
same time. Only saved changes from the first opened appear in the second when it is
opened and only the changes made to the last one saved remain (the other changes are
lost). SOLUTION: Don't work on the same file at the same time!
2. When editing your workbook format, you cannot reorder the tabs in workbook, so better
put them in the right order to start.
3. UNIT OPS on workbook cannot be deleted, changed, or duplicated.
4. Holding down the <Ctrl> button automatically places one temporarily in Attach Mode.
5. If you want to move just a label, click on the label then either press <L> or choose "move
label" from the menu appearing with the right mouse button.
6. Can Duplicate Streams Within a flowsheet by going to the property view of the stream to
which you want the properties copied. Go to the Utility tab and choose "Copy Stream
Specs From «".
7. When setting compositions by flows instead of fractions, the normalize button simply
sets empty cells to zero.
8. One way of creating images (perhaps there is a better way) is to print the screen to the
clipboard (press <SHIFT+Print Screen>), then paste it in a blank slide in PowerPoint.
Crop it down to the image you want then save it as a jpeg or GIF (change the file type it
is to save to).
9. To move things on a 2D graph, must double click once to outline the entire graph then
single click on the item to be moved and drag (a double click will call up the graph
controls). If part of the text or numbers on the graph are cut off, this will also fix the
problem.
10.To change fonts on the 3D graph must change fonts for all graphs in the preference file.
Unfortunately cannot move text around on the display, though.
11.You may add a copy of your PFD to your workspace, giving you the chance to rearrange
the view. Note, however, that removing an object from any PFD removes it globally, not
just on that view.
Fluid Package Notes

1. You can choose thermo packages to be both an activity coefficient model for the liquid
and EOS for the vapor. Must choose the activity model first, and then choose from the
drop down menu the preferred "vapour model". Look in Chapter 8 and Appendix A of the
Reference Volume 1 for more information on the choosing of the thermo package.
2. By exporting, then importing, you may transfer fluid packages between files.
(Alternatively, if you used the Save As command to start the second file it will
automatically have the same fluid packages of course). To have slightly different fluid
packages within the same file (say you want the same compounds but a different thermo
package) the Copy button may be employed to copy an existing package under a new
name for editing. This is useful if you want to use, for example, an EOS model in the
main flowsheet containing a reactor but an activity coefficient model in a column sub-
flowsheet.
3. Seems as if the only way to get a totally ideal property package is to use either a vapour
pressure model like Antoine or an activity model like Margules with the vapour model set
to Ideal and all the binary coefficients deleted (make sure to get both Aij's and Bij's).
4. Binary Coefficients are library values unless instructed to calculate new ones by the user.
The only way to get the original library values back is to change then re-select the
property package.
5. In the tabular, Note that for all properties except K factors, the tabular must be used for
all components in the case.

Oil Notes (for petrochemical work)

1. When experimenting with the Refining Tutorial components in the fluid package were
changed without my knowledge or approval. Hypotheticals acted weird. The file gave
even more different results from the tutorial than the file with the correct fluid package.
Might have been the result of changing the property package and then changing it back
since hypotheticals are tied into the property package.
2. If you want to use an oil in more than one file, etc. Save the assay, not the fluid package,
otherwise you cannot introduce the oil as a stream.
3. See p.275 of Reference Volume 1 for a good explanation of assay %.
4. In refining example Standard Density NOT requested as API
Reaction Section Notes

1. Under "Reaction Heat" a positive # indicates an exothermic reaction (it is not the delta H
of reaction). Find out if they are the same apart from the sign.
2. HYSYS requires for equilibrium reactions that you either provide info about the constant
or provide a table of T vs. K values. What does Aspen do for equilibrium reactors?
3. Note that the Absorption Parameter in Seth's Example of Plug Flow seems to have the
wrong units. Change in all pertinent locations (not just HYSYS).
4. Find out if Aspen "integrates" the same way and if so, how to affect the number of its
divisions.

Databook Notes

Data Recorder does not allow some variable changes between recordings. Figure out which
changes are acceptable.

Column Notes

1. On page 131 of tutorial, it talks about being unable to do a 3-phase condenser in the
column while claiming total reflux. This is no longer the case, it can be done now.
2. When reporting the total number of theoretical stages one needs to include all the main
column trays as well as all side stripper trays and all condensers and reboilers (i.e. those
for side strippers too). Example: The refining example in the tutorial has 40 total stages in
four total tray sections.
3. Be Careful when looking at graphs of results for columns (check out the table as well to
make sure that the entries and order are what you think they are).
4. On column condensers and reboilers, can apparently only use energy streams for the
heating or cooling, not material streams. So will have to include some sort of temperature
cross check.
Unsorted Notes

1. HYSYS does not have the capability to do multistage compressors (i.e. no equivalent to
Aspen's MCOMPR).
2. Interesting note about the use of PUMP vs. COMPRESSOR on p.424 of RV2. In general,
Compressors are for gases and pumps are for liquids (the liquids are assumed
incompressible). But, if you actually want realistic compression of liquids (say near their
critical point), go ahead and use the compressor.
3. How does the sign work on energy streams? If you set up a cooler but make the
temperature of the stream rise, what happens? Get negative energy streams (can also get
negative material streams if work at it)

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