• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.10-24
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• 2013

The state-of-arts of multiscale simulation (MSS) in science and engineering is briefly presented and MSS for process development (PD-MSS) is proposed to effectively apply the MSS to the process development. The four-level PD-MSS is composed of PLS (process-level simulation), FLS (fluid-level simulation), mFLS (microfluid-level simulation) and MLS (molecular-level simulation). Characteristics and methods of each level, as well as connectivity between the four levels are described. For example in PD-MSS, absorption column, fluidized-bed reactor, and adsorption process are introduced. For successful MSS, it is necessary to understand the multiscale nature in chemical engineering problems, to develop models representing physical phenomena at each scale and between scales, to develop softwares implementing mathematical models on computer, and to have strong computing facilities. MSS should be performed within acceptable accuracy of simulation results, available computation capacity, and reasonable efficiency of calculation. Macroscopic and microscopic scale simulations have been developed relatively well but mesoscale simulation shows a bottleneck in MSS. Therefore, advances on mesoscale models and simulation tools are required to accurately and reliably predict physical phenomena. PD-MSS will find its way into a sustainable technology being able to shorten the duration and to reduce the cost for process development.