Porcelain tile manufacturing: integrated digital-twin and optimization workflow
Project scope: Full wet-route line (milling, spray drying, storage, pressing, drying, firing) with linked quality, productivity, energy, cost, and CO2 targets.
How Dyssol Pro was used: Unit models were calibrated against lab/industrial data and coupled to optimization workflows. Follow-up work expanded the optimization from operating setpoints to raw-material composition ranges, because raw-material variability shifts firing behavior and final quality. This enabled engineers to evaluate recipe and operating parameter combinations across the process chain, not just single best-point settings.
How Dyssol Pro helped: By evaluating recipe and operating parameters together in one dynamic flowsheet, teams identified feasible operating windows that lower fuel demand and emissions while keeping quality constraints (e.g., porosity/water-absorption limits). One reported outcome is up to 30.2% lower fuel demand per ton of fired tile for selected operating conditions.
Practical takeaway: Use a coupled flowsheet when recipe, milling, and kiln settings need to be evaluated together against quality and energy targets.
Sources: 10.1016/j.cirpj.2021.04.011, 10.3390/machines11020137, 10.1016/j.ceramint.2023.01.056, 10.1111/jace.19581
Li-ion battery mechanical recycling: dynamic interaction of comminution and separation
Project scope: Mechanical process chain around cutting mill and zig-zag sifter for secondary battery materials, including transient feed variations.
How Dyssol Pro was used: Unit models for milling and classification were connected as one dynamic flowsheet, so outlet mass/PSD transients from milling propagated directly into separator performance.
How Dyssol Pro helped: By propagating mill transients directly into the separator model, Dyssol Pro made the cause-effect clear: rising upstream mass flow broadens separator cut behavior and reduces separation sharpness, which directly shifts recovery and purity predictions.
Practical takeaway: Model upstream transients explicitly, because separator efficiency and product quality metrics can shift during non-steady operation.
Source: 10.1002/cite.202200156
Industrial zeolite production: multiscale surrogate integration in one flowsheet
Project scope: End-to-end catalyst process with synthesis, decanter washing/concentration, spray drying, and two-stage rotary-kiln calcination.
How Dyssol Pro was used: DEM-informed ANN surrogates and PBM were integrated into the synthesis stage and connected with dynamic downstream unit models in one process-level flowsheet.
How Dyssol Pro helped: By combining surrogate synthesis models with dynamic downstream units in one flowsheet, Dyssol Pro enabled teams to evaluate fast and slow dynamics together while tracking multidimensional solids properties through the full chain.
Practical takeaway: Surrogate-assisted flowsheeting is useful when high-fidelity synthesis behavior is needed without losing process-level simulation speed.
Source: Processes 2022, 10(10), 2140
Industrial continuous fluidized-bed lactose drying: energy optimization and digital twin
Project scope: Industrial continuous fluidized-bed drying (FBD) of wet crystalline lactose for pharmaceutical use, with three sequential drying zones — each with its own fluidization-air flow rate and temperature — fed from an upstream sieve centrifuge whose flow rate and moisture vary.
How Dyssol Pro was used: A new dynamic FBD unit model was built in Dyssol Pro from fundamental heat- and mass-balance equations, thermodynamics, and experimentally measured drying kinetics. The three drying zones were connected as one flowsheet (with gas splitter and mixer), predicting dried-lactose moisture and exhaust-air temperature — and quantifying energy consumption — across a wide range of wet-lactose flow, fluidization-air flow, and air temperature.
How Dyssol Pro helped: Fast, accurate prediction enabled model-based optimization of the inlet-air parameters, lowering energy consumption and the thermal load on the temperature-sensitive product while stabilizing product quality. The model also forms the basis for a real-time digital twin of the wider lactose production line.
Practical takeaway: For industrial FBD with variable upstream feed, a validated dynamic flowsheet model lets teams tune air flow and temperature for both energy and quality — without disruptive trials on the running plant.
Source: 10.1016/j.apt.2025.104864
Continuous vibrated fluidized-bed drying: validated dynamic shortcut model
Project scope: Continuous dryer modeling across multiple geometries and particle classes (Geldart A/B/D), including vibration effects relevant for pharma/food solids.
How Dyssol Pro was used: Implemented coupled hydrodynamics and drying kinetics with distributed particle properties, then validated against broad experimental parameter sweeps.
How Dyssol Pro helped: Because the coupled drying model was validated across broad experiments, teams could use it for fast operating-window comparisons with reported moisture deviations below 14% in key cases and low temperature deviations (often a few percent), at practical runtimes (reported 1-3 min on a standard PC).
Practical takeaway: This type of model is well suited for fast comparison of operating windows across materials, geometries, and vibration settings.
Source: 10.3390/pr9010052
Semi-batch precipitation: mixing-sensitive product formation
Project scope: Semi-batch precipitation of sparingly soluble salts with quality targets that depend on local mixing, supersaturation, and transient feed strategy.
How Dyssol Pro was used: Dynamic precipitation models were implemented as flowsheet units to evaluate operating strategies and mixing-related effects across the process sequence.
How Dyssol Pro helped: By explicitly simulating dynamic feed and mixing strategies, Dyssol Pro enabled teams to quantify trade-offs between product quality and stable operation and to narrow candidate operating windows.
Practical takeaway: For mixing-sensitive precipitation, evaluate time-varying feed and agitation policies directly, not only nominal steady assumptions.
Sources: 10.1016/j.compchemeng.2020.106818, KIT 1000076187
Chemical looping combustion: dynamic coupled-reactor operation
Project scope: Pilot-scale CLC with strongly coupled fluidized-bed units, cyclone, loop seals, and circulating oxygen carrier.
How Dyssol Pro was used: Dynamic flowsheet models were built for reactor hydrodynamics and inter-unit solids/gas coupling, then validated against pilot measurements (including transient load changes).
How Dyssol Pro helped: By reproducing observed transients in bed masses, solids circulation, and pressure/gas trends, Dyssol Pro exposed a key system effect: if redox dynamics are included in methane CLC, the characteristic response shifts from around ~30 s to several hundred seconds, i.e., much slower transient behavior.
Practical takeaway: For load-change studies in coupled reactor systems, include both hydrodynamics and redox-state dynamics in the same dynamic model.
Sources: 10.1016/j.ijggc.2018.03.004, 10.1016/j.powtec.2016.12.022
