Process Modelling and Simulation

Dear Colleagues,

Models are increasingly used for a large variety of purposes in the process industry, including process design, process control, supervisory systems, process optimization, etc. and are becoming irreplaceable components for any analysis or decision making process. Nevertheless, as models are today ubiquitous in many applications, the problems and alternatives related to their development, validation, reduction or efficient use become more apparent. Massive amounts of data available today online open the door for new applications. However, transforming data into useful models and information in the context of the process industry or bio-systems, agro-food, etc., requires specific approaches and considerations, in particular new modelling methodologies incorporating the complex, stochastic, hybrid and distributed nature of many processes.

The same can be said about the tools and software environments used to describe and solve the models and facilitate their exploitation. More and more, they cannot be considered merely as simulation tools, but as a set of tools built around the models facilitating topics such as experiment design, parameter estimation, model initialization, model validation, analysis, discretization, optimization, model reduction and surrogate model extraction, multiscale operation, distributed computation, co-simulation, HIL, etc. Moreover, advances both in modelling tools and in the underlying hardware and software infrastructure are allowing increasing re-use of models along the entire process lifecycle, from early stage process design to process operations, automation and control.

This Special issue of Processes, dedicated to “Process Modelling and Simulation”, aims to collect novel developments in the field in order to address the challenges brought by the use of models in its different facets, and to reflect the state of the art in methods, tools and applications. Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Modelling methodologies
• Model development
• Model online adaptation
• Parameter estimation
• Process-model uncertainty quantification
• Simulation environments
• Grey-box models
• Hybrid modelling
• Multiscale systems
• Numerical methods
• Distributed models
• Model reduction
• Data driven models
• Applications illustrating recent advances and/or outstanding research gaps in the above areas

We hope that you consider contributing with the results of your research to this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Cesar de Prada
Prof. Dr. Costas Pantelides
Dr. Jose Luis Pitarch
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Processes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.