Vira Workspace: A Novel Online Object-Oriented Framework as a SaaS for the Modeling and Simulation of Petrochemical Plant Networks

The petrochemical industry plays a crucial role in the global economy, necessitating advanced tools for the modeling and simulation of its complex process unit networks. This paper presents a comprehensive system-level modeling framework called Vira Workspace for simulating and analyzing petrochemical process unit networks. The workspace is developed as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution, providing easy cloud-based access to a wide variety of users. The design principles, architecture, functional features, and workflows of the software are described. By adopting an object-oriented approach, we model the process units and their interdependencies and interactions, optimizing the computational cost of the simulation. The simulation results provide insights into material and energy flows, investment costs, detailed production costs, and financial indicators, incorporating pricing scenarios, financial parameters, and dynamic operational scenarios. Two case studies are conducted to demonstrate the software's capabilities. The first case study evaluates the economic feasibility of a propylene to ABS resin plant in China, Germany, Iran, and Japan, highlighting significant variations in investment costs, production costs, and financial indicators across different locations. The second case study focuses on Iran's petrochemical plants, showcasing the software's ability to model and analyze complex networks of interconnected process units. The simulation results provide valuable insights into the plant's operational efficiency and financial performance, validated against official financial reports of the petrochemical companies. By leveraging advanced algorithms and computational efficiency, the presented SaaS solution facilitates the concept study and design of petrochemical unit networks, supports informed decision-making, and offers a valuable tool to enhance design and operational performance.