Hydrometallurgical Simulation - A Viable Program Structure
Date
2015-01-13
Authors
Cilliers, Johannes Jacobus Le Roux
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Abstract
In order to satisfy the increasingly sophisticated
requirements for simulation in the metallurgical
industry, this research focused on the development of
data structures and algorithms general and extendable
enough to accomodate all hydrometallurgical
processes.
The data structures' designed to describe process
stream information were based on the concept of
sub-streams (Britt-, 19SG) using the pi ex data
structure (Evans, Joseph and Seider, 1977) inherent
to the Pascal programming language. As sub-streams are
combined to describe complete process streams, the
data structures may be extended to describe any
process stream by creating additional sub-streams as
may be required.
Algorithms for partitioning, tearing and ordering
flow sheets based on the work of Tarjan (1972, 1973)
and Lee and Rudd (1966) were designed and
implemented. These algorithms are able to treat the
large problem sizes associated with
hydrometallurgical process flow sheets.
The data structures and algorithms have been
successfully combined into a powerful process
simulator extendable to the general
hydrometallurgical process description.