UNIFAC Consortium

The UNIFAC Consortium was founded at the Carl -von- Ossietzky University of Oldenburg in the Department of Chemistry of Jürgen Gmehling, to invite private companies to support the development of group contribution methods UNIFAC and its successors. The methods are essentially the estimation of thermodynamic properties, especially the prediction of phase equilibria.

The UNIFAC Consortium is a successful example of the support of a public institution by private lenders.

History

The UNIFAC - industry consortium founded in 1997, when it was clear that public funding for model development would not proceed. Since UNIFAC and the successor, mod. UNIFAC (Dortmund ) has been extensively used in the industry in the areas of process simulation and process synthesis, there was clear evidence from the departments for research and development of these companies for their willingness to support this consortium.

The consortium is currently (as of September 2008), supported by more than 40 companies, including Akzo Nobel, Arkema, BASF, Ciba, Cognis, Dow, DSM, DuPont, Eastman, Evonik, ExxonMobil, GlaxoSmithKline, Hoffmann -La Roche, LyondellBasell, Mitsui Chemicals, Mitsubishi Chemicals, Repsol YPF, Rhodia, SABIC, Shell, Sasol, Sumitomo Chemical and Wacker Chemie. In addition to these large companies also some smaller engineering companies and university groups are members of the consortium.

A special role in the company DDBST GmbH occurs. This represents the Dortmund Data Bank (DDB ) and a lot of software available for free. The DDB, a fact database for thermodynamic data, in particular phase equilibria, is the most important basis for work of the consortium.

Objectives of the consortium

The work of the consortium consists essentially of

  • Creating new and improving old model parameters
  • The measurement of experimental data (partly in-house, partly by contract)
  • The holding of an annual meeting sponsors

For example, the consortium has been amended and supplemented to date 404 interaction parameters of the UNIFAC model over the last publication.

  • Interaction parameters of the UNIFAC model

UNIFAC consortium parameters September 2008

In the UNIFAC consortium amended or supplemented parameters

The main objectives are to

  • Improvement of the prediction quality,
  • To improve the applicability of the models. This includes in particular the support for other components with new functional groups.
  • The parameters for process simulation software and the DDB software to make available (only for consortium members)

The parameters created in the consortium are accessible confidential and for two and a half years after the first delivery only to members. After this time the University Working Group may publish the parameters.

Supported Models

The UNIFAC Consortium is currently developing parameters for three models:

Both UNIFAC models calculate Aktvitätskoeffizienten, PSRK other hand, is a combination of a slightly modified UNIFAC with an equation of state.

Ciba Specialty Chemicals Eastman Chemical Company Evonik Industries Rhodia (company)
792285
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