Lessons Learnt by Using Industrial Engineering Documents Information for Building Multilevel Flow Models

Multilevel Flow Modeling methodology has been developed and applied for process engineering systems for more than two decades and significant experience has been gained in building MFM models from basic principles. However, model quality and efficiency of the building process can be improved by a structured analysis of plant knowledge.

The analyses are: 1) Selection of modeling boundary, 2) Decomposition of plant objectives, 3) Mass and energy interactions between systems and surroundings using control volume approach, 4) Part-whole and means-end analysis. It is also found that to meet the needs of industry, engineering documents should be used as a basis for the analyses.

The paper describes lessons learnt from case studies of oil and gas plants using such a strategy for MFM modeling. The purpose of the paper is to share modeling experience among MFM model builders and to clarify some common issues confronted by model builders.