(48e) Parallel Distillation Calculations Using Openmp
AIChE Annual Meeting
2014
2014 AIChE Annual Meeting
Computing and Systems Technology Division
CAST Division Plenary
Monday, November 17, 2014 - 10:10am to 10:35am
With current CPU speeds reaching a practical maximum value, CPU manufacturers are now creating CPU's with multiple cores to allow for parallel processing. However, most process design simulators do not take advantage of parallelism. This paper presents speedup results for solving rigorous distillation columns by Newton's Method using OPENMP. A new thermodynamic engine was developed and used here which allows for parallel computation of thermodynamic properties such as the fugacity coefficients, enthalpies and also the associated temperature and composition derivatives. Strategies to avoid cache misses and keep relevant data in the L1 and L2 caches are discussed. Results are presented for the speedups obtained by calculating the thermodynamic properties, equation residuals and jacobian elements in parallel. The systems studied are rigorous superfractionator and demethanizer distillation columns.