Strategies for Equilibrium-Stage Separation Calculations on Parallel Computers

by

Alfred J. O'Neill, Daniel J. Kaiser and Mark A. Stadtherr


ABSTRACT

When multicomponent, multistage separation problems are solved on parallel computers by successive linearization methods, the solution of a large sparse linear equation system becomes a computational bottleneck, since other parts of the calculation are more easily parallelized. When the standard problem formulation is used, this system has a block-tridiagonal form. It is shown how this structure can be used in parallelizing the sparse matrix computation. By reformulating the problem so that it has a bordered-block-bidiagonal superstructure, it can be made even more amenable to parallelization. These strategies permit the use of a two-level hierarchy of parallelism that provides substantial improvements in computational performance on parallel machines.

AIChE J., 40, 65-72 (1994)



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