Application of Multi-Software Engineering: A Review and a Kinetic Parameter Identification Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The work titled "Application of multi-software engineering in PSE: A review and a v-valerolactone production case study" presents an interesting review of coupling methods used in PSE and a final application. 

In my opinion, the review can be synthesized. The paper is very lengthy to read by describing all that each paper referred in the review has. It is more interesting to group and correlate than describe each work. If the authors want to provide a useful review, they need to correlate the works they review, not just describe them. 

Another point that I guess is not perfectly described is the connection with optimization. Authors have limited to describe the works of the CAPE-OPEN group, but there are other groups with stronger work in optimization. For example, the groups of Prof. Gani, Prof. Fengqi You or the works of Dr. Athanasios Papadopoulous have very interesting works of process modeling connected with other tools. In particular, with process optimization, and process and product design connected.

A last critical point to address or at least the authors should differentiate is the reasoning behind why Comsol is treated as a process modeling software. Comsol is a CFD software and it is hard for process modeling. People typically use surrogates to address heat and mass transfer mechanisms in process modeling. I guess that this inclusion of heat and mass transfer could be also included in the review. 

Apart from that, a more detailed description of the algorithms used for fitting the kinetics in matlab would be also helpful. In particular, why the authors need that high computational cost (11 h)?

In a similar way, I think that the purpose of the study is not perfectly addressed: Why do the authors need the iterative framework? Is it not possible to fit first the kinetic model and then run the process with an iterative framework Aspen-matlab that will be only for process simulation?

Other minor errors to be attached are: 

- English needs to be reviewed : E.g. page 2|L51: "one another". 

-Commas must be place after "For example, " "Nowadays," page 2. 

- English needs to be reviewed : E.g. page 2|L51: "one another". 

-Commas must be place after "For example, " "Nowadays," page 2. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1. In the introduction, you need to connect the state of the art to your paper goals. Please follow the literature review by a clear and concise state of the art analysis. This should clearly show the knowledge gaps identified and link them to your paper goals. Please reason both the novelty and the relevance of your paper goals.

2. Better discuss industrial aspects of your research results in details.

3. Conclusions must go deeper, it would be more interesting if the authors focus more on the significance of their findings regarding the importance of the interrelationship between the obtained results and the journal scope in the sector context, and the barriers to do it, what would be the consequences, in the real world, in changing the observed situation, what would be the ways, in the real world, to change/improve the observed situation.

5. Numerous minor mistakes in English writing have been found. Please polish the manuscript to avoid errors.

6. The work is well written and provides good results, which are properly presented in the graphs, but their discussion can be deepened.

7. The Abstract should be improved.

8. From readers perspective, authors are suggested to incorporate detailed mathematical modelling of proposed framework.

9. After inclusion of more detailed modeling and validation, authors are suggested to improve the conclusion of the paper based on findings and after impacts.

10. Compare your results with the results of other researchers.

11. The authors can consider the items below for improving the conclusion section: - Restate the research topic in conclusion. - Summarize the main points. - State the significance or results. - Avoid repeating information that you have already discussed. - Mention the model's name, and the advantages and disadvantages of the model. - Mention limitation of the study. - Provide some recommendations for future potential researchers.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors present a review paper on multi-software engineering (MSE) in process system engineering.

A list of the major issue I see with the manuscript is as follows:

0) Title

define PSE since it is not used anywhere else in the paper. In addition, I would remove the mention of the case study since it is not strictly linked to the review itself.

1) Introduction

There are many sentences not referenced  

2) Literature overview

- I see the point of Figure 1 to justify the increase of works on the studied subject through the years, but I do not see the reason to study the sector's evolution chronologically. This section should be completely revised and merged with section 5 in order to evidence the area of application of MSE and correlate them to the tables already present.

- Then, I suggest not slavishly reporting what each author has done but rather building a harmonious flow of thoughts that the reader can more interestingly follow.

- Furthermore, I often see that when describing applications that use process simulators, the validation of the model is often neglected. On the other hand, multiple recent applications do exploit high fidelity/rigorous simulation models to develop surrogate ones via machine learning methodologies and neural networks for various applications (see e.g. "A methodology for the optimal surrogate modeling of digital twins using machine learning" (2022), "Multi-objective optimization of a crude oil hydrotreating process with a crude distillation unit based on bootstrap aggregated neural network models" (2022)); similarly, to overcome the computational costs of rigorous simulation models a recent work used them offline to produce data to analytically optimize a distillation unit (see Analytical RTO for a critical distillation process based on offline rigorous simulation. (2022)). In this sense, the validation of the model is of primary importance since it generates data for new simplified models. Consider that data reconciliation has been performed using optimization tools internal to the simulation environments (see e.g. "A rigorous simulation model of geothermal power plants for emission control." (2020) , "Rigorous simulation of geothermal power plants to evaluate environmental performance of alternative configurations." (2023) ) but can easily be transported to other software e.g. Python, Matlab, exploiting dedicated optimization algorithms (e.g. "Tuning of oil well models with production data reconciliation." (2021)). I, therefore, believe that this topic is of extreme importance in the MSE field. 

3) Linking types for multi-software applications

This section deserves a Table

4) CAPE-OPEN standard

Fig.2 should be better described. Furthermore do not use acronyms in the figure or specify them in the caption. Moreover, use ellipsis in the lists in the green boxes since those are not the all possibilities there are.

5) Fields of application in multi-software engineering

This should be included/ merged with section 2

Tables: please concise the research focus to what is to be specified, e.g. Optimizing operating conditions: research focus is "Optimization of crude oil distillation systems with preflash units" --> "Crude oil distillation systems with preflash units"

6) Multi-software based identification of kinetic parameters for γ-valerolactone production

Change the title of the section to "Case study" because it does not feel appropriate to the topic in this paper.

Figure 6: Specify better if the continuous trends are calculated from Hysys or from a post-reprocessing of data after finding the optimal parameters

7) Conclusions:

These should be completely rewritten. At the moment these are more or less fine for a research paper but not for a review paper. This section should conclude the narration with an outlook and the research needs or questions to be answered.

The paper should be carefully checked because there are different typos and sentences that do not sound correct in English. A check from a native English speaker is suggested.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

All the questions have been addressed by the authors.