Novel application for exergy and thermoeconomic analysis of processes simulated with Aspen Plus®

A visual basic application for Microsoft® Excel 2007 has been developed as a helpful tool to perform mass, energy, exergy and thermoeconomic (MHBT) calculations during the systematic analysis of energy processes simulated with Aspen Plus®. The application reads an Excel workbook containing three sheets with the matter, work and heat streams results of an Aspen Plus® simulation. The required information from the Aspen Plus® simulation and the algorithm/calculations of the application are described and applied to an Air Separation Unit (ASU). This application helps the designer when MHBT analyses are performed, as it increases the knowledge of the process simulated with Aspen Plus®. It’s a valuable tool not only because of the calculations performed, but also because it creates a new Excel workbook where the results and the formulae written on the cells are fully visible and editable. There is free access to the application and it has no protection allowing changes and improvements to be done.

Research highlights► Development of a Microsoft Excel VBA application to be used as a complement to the process data simulated with Aspen Plus ► The application calculates the exergetic costs and thermoeconomic costs, as well as several interesting indexes to perform an exergetic and thermoeconomic analysis of the process ► The calculations and results are given in an independent Excel Workbook the user can freely modified to perform different analysis scenarios, or sensitivity analysis.