Comparative and Statistical Study on Aspen Plus Interfaces Used for Stochastic Optimization

New research on complex intensified distillation schemes has popularized the use of several commercial process simulation software. The interfaces between process simulation and optimization-oriented software have allowed the use of rigorous and robust models. This type of optimization is mentioned in the literature as "Black Box Optimization", since successive evaluations exploits the information from the simulator without altering the model that represents the given process. Among process simulation software, Aspen Plus� has become popular due to their rigorous calculations, model customization, and results reliability. This work proposes a comparative study for Aspen Plus software and Microsoft Excel VBA�, Python� and MATLAB� interfaces. Five distillation schemes were analyzed: conventional column, reactive column, extractive column, column with side rectifier and a Petlyuk column. The optimization of the ?????? (Total Annual Cost) was carried out by a modified Simulated Annealing Algorithm (m-SAA). The evaluation criteria are the time per iteration (????) and ?????? values. The results indicate that the best option to carry out the optimization was by using the VBA interface, however the one carried out with Python did not differ radically (12%).