Real flowsheets, already solved
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Lignocellulosic ethanol — pretreatment + enzymatic hydrolysis + real fermentation
The bioresource-engineering gap this closes: two existing 'corn-ethanol' showcases in this catalog (superheated-steam-drying-loop, bioethanol-mvr-stillage) are both downstream-only — drying and distillation on an already-fermented feed or a generic surrogate solid, with no bioreactor anywhere in either flowsheet. This is the first biofuel showcase that actually runs a real fermentation: pretreatment (dilute-acid/steam) solubilizes part of the lignocellulosic feed into fermentable sugars, the existing generic enzymatic_reactor (Michaelis-Menten) saccharifies the cellulose fraction left behind, and the existing bioreactor (Monod chemostat) ferments the resulting sugar to ethanol — the real kinetics kernel, not a spec-based separator standing in for the biology. Bounded, and stated plainly: the pretreatment conversion fraction (hemicellulose → sugar) is a caller-specified design input — a measured/vendor yield, not a predicted dilute-acid severity-factor (log R0) correlation; inventing one would fabricate exactly the number this flowsheet's answer depends on. Real lignocellulose chemistry (cellulose, hemicellulose, xylose, glucose) carries no enthalpy or density data anywhere in MaximaLabs's thermo databank — every sugar was checked directly and none has a liquid-density or ideal-gas-Cp correlation, so a flowsheet naming them by their real identities cannot solve at all. Real, differently-named organics with full databank coverage stand in 1:1 instead (glycerol for the lignocellulosic solid, acetic acid for the hemicellulose-derived sugar liquor, methanol for glucose) — the same generic-surrogate posture already established elsewhere in MaximaLabs (e.g. ethanol standing in as the dissolved substrate in the perfusion-bioreactor tests). Ethanol itself is the one real target molecule in the chain — no surrogate needed. Kinetic constants (mu_max, Vmax, Km, yields) are illustrative, not fit to a published fermentation study — the same posture the LHHW methanol-synthesis showcase states for its own rate law. The pentose-sugar liquor from pretreatment is not fermented in this showcase (many industrial processes do not ferment it with ordinary yeast either) — it reports to its own product stream rather than being silently discarded. No downstream distillation is attempted: a rigorous VLE column needs every component priceable, and the fermentation broth carries an unpriced 'biomass' pseudo-component (the same class of limitation this session's Gibbs-reactor work hit with elemental carbon) — ethanol recovery is the documented next real step, not modeled here.
8 unit ops • NRTL
1 0
View & openMonoclonal antibody — perfusion culture to freeze-dried vial
A monoclonal antibody from the perfusion culture that makes it to the freeze-dried vial: culture → capture → viral inactivation → virus filtration → UF/DF → lyophilization. Every downstream step was a standalone calculator before this; wiring them together is what makes the train's numbers agree with each other — raise the culture's productivity and the capture column, the filter area and the vial count all move with it. The protein enters as a product, not a feed. No property databank carries a 148 kDa antibody (a biomolecule databank is a licensed-data gap, not a missing formula), so the mAb is produced by the bioreactor rather than declared on a feed — a feed component has to be priced thermodynamically, and this one cannot be. Capture (PROTEIN_A). Sized on dynamic binding capacity via Bohart-Adams, the model derived for the near-irreversible isotherm a Protein A resin has — the rigorous bed PDE does not converge at a ~1e-3 g/L dissociation constant, so the method here is the one process development actually uses. Titre and harvest volume come from the feed stream, so changing the upstream titre resizes the column. Viral inactivation (LOW_PH_HOLD). The kill is biphasic: the resistant fraction imposes a hard −log₁₀(f) ceiling, so a longer hold stops helping. single-population fit would promise unlimited kill and justify a hold that cannot deliver — raise target_log_reduction past the ceiling and the step says so instead of reporting a number. Virus filtration (VIRUS_FILTER). Sized on capacity, not flux: the filter plugs, so throughput climbs toward Vmax and never past it. That is why more pressure does not rescue an undersized filter, and why the step reports throughput against capacity. UF/DF (UFDF). Film-theory polarization and the virial osmotic-pressure flux equation solved together — which is what produces the pressure-independent plateau that defines ultrafiltration. Raise the TMP and watch the flux barely move while the wall concentration climbs; raise the mass-transfer coefficient (crossflow) instead and it responds. The reverse-osmosis membrane op structurally cannot show that. Freeze drying (LYO). Primary drying by the Pikal vial model, with the collapse margin the cycle actually has to respect. Push the shelf temperature up and the cycle shortens right up until the product crosses its collapse temperature and the batch is lost. No biologics data ships, deliberately. Every number that decides an answer here — resin capacity and rate constant, the virus kill rate and Vmax, the protein's second virial coefficient, the vial heat-transfer coefficient and cake resistance — is measured for your molecule, your resin, your dryer. The values in this example are illustrative and each step refuses rather than defaulting when one is missing. Bounds. Screening-grade process development, not a tech-transfer package: pH elution is a declared yield rather than a desorption model, the ICH Q5A clearance budget across steps lives in the Viral clearance tool (a budget spans steps), and no GMP artefacts — batch records, 21 CFR Part 11 — exist here.
13 unit ops • NRTL
50 0
View & openBio-ethanol: energy-integrated distillation + MVR stillage concentration
A dilute beer (10% ethanol) is concentrated toward the azeotrope in a beer column, and the water-rich stillage bottoms are concentrated in an evaporator whose vapor is recompressed by a mechanical-vapor-recompression (MVR) compressor — recovering the stillage vapor's latent heat as high-grade heating duty instead of venting it, the energy-integration route that eliminates a separate thermal oxidizer.
9 unit ops • NRTL
169 0
View & openChiral API purification: continuous SMB chromatography
A racemic active pharmaceutical ingredient (R/S enantiomers, dilute in ethanol eluent) is resolved continuously by simulated moving bed chromatography — the workhorse of chiral-drug manufacture that legacy steady-state flowsheet simulators have no native model for (engineers script it in MATLAB). This uses the native SMB unit op, which solves the standard steady-state True Moving Bed equivalent: a 4-zone counter-current equilibrium-stage cascade whose zone flow-rate ratios sit inside the triangle-theory separation region, so the more-retained enantiomer reports to the extract and the other to the raffinate — the separation is driven by the chiral adsorption selectivity (the two enantiomers are otherwise thermodynamically identical).
5 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
167 0
View & openContinuous mAb: perfusion bioreactor into TFF concentration
The upstream and downstream halves of a biologics process on one canvas. A perfusion bioreactor produces a cell-free harvest, and the antibody in it is then concentrated by tangential-flow filtration — the step every biologics process ends with. The membrane is a per-species rejection, which is what makes UF/DF a genuine steady-state unit rather than something that has to be pretended into one: the antibody is fully retained while the spent substrate and lactate pass freely into the permeate. The split is not asserted — it follows from the concentration target, and the flux the membrane can actually deliver at the resulting wall concentration is what sets the area. The polarization is the point. Retained protein piles up at the membrane wall far above the bulk, and it is the wall concentration that sets the osmotic back-pressure — which is why ultrafiltration flux plateaus with pressure instead of rising with it, and why a specified-recovery membrane model cannot represent this step at all. Bounded, and inherited from the underlying model: no fouling or time-dependent resistance growth, and the virial coefficients that set a protein's osmotic pressure are caller inputs because they are measured per protein per formulation — no protein databank ships with this.
6 unit ops • NRTL
54 0
View & openPerfusion bioreactor: continuous mAb culture with cell retention
A continuous mammalian culture run in perfusion — fresh medium is exchanged continuously while an ATF/TFF device retains the cells, and density is set by a deliberate bleed rather than by the medium-exchange rate. That decoupling is the whole point, and it is what an ordinary chemostat cannot represent: at steady state the cell balance pins mu - mu_d to the cell-specific removal rate D_eff = D[phi + (1-phi)(1-R)], not to the dilution rate, so this culture holds roughly ten times the cell density the same feed would support in a chemostat. Lactate accumulates and inhibits growth, cells die at a basal rate (so the reported viability is below 100%), and the secreted antibody follows Luedeking-Piret kinetics — leaving in the cell-free harvest while the bleed carries the cells away. Set retention to 0.0 and this collapses exactly to the plain chemostat the 'bioreactor' example shows.
4 unit ops • NRTL
75 0
View & openPatent benchmark: enzymatic cannabinoid synthesis (US9359625B2)
Real patent replication: US9359625B2's THCA-synthase-catalyzed conversion of cannabigerolic acid (CBGA) into either THCA or CBCA depending on operating pH — closing the genuine enzyme-kinetics gap this session's fact-check found (only Monod biomass-growth kinetics existed anywhere in MaximaLabs, no Michaelis-Menten). The patent's own disclosed pH-selectivity data anchors this model: it reports 'catalysis at a lower pH... favored THCA... while... neutral pH... favored CBCA,' a ~10:1 THCA:CBCA ratio at pH 5.0, and CBCA dominant at pH 7.0 — fit here as a single-ionizable-group pH-titration switch (pKa_switch=6.0), which reproduces the reported 10:1 ratio at pH 5.0 exactly (that's how pKa_switch was chosen) and gives ~10:1 CBCA:THCA at pH 7.0 (matching the patent's 'CBCA exclusively' qualitatively, not to an exact published ratio, since the patent gives no numeric ratio at pH 7.0 to match). Reactor volume is sized to clear the patent's own disclosed '>20% conversion' commercial threshold (reaches ~25.0% here).
3 unit ops • BRINE
167 0
View & openPatent benchmark: gas fermentation to single-cell protein (JP2024028821A)
The gas-fermentation process class JP2024028821A describes: hydrogen-oxidizing chemolithoautotrophic bacteria (the patent names Cupriavidus necator and Rhodococcus opacus strains) fixing CO₂ using H₂ as the electron donor to grow single-cell protein biomass. Built here with real physics closing two genuine gaps this session's fact-check found missing: gas-liquid mass transfer (Henry's-law dissolution + a volumetric kLa driving the H₂ dissolution rate) and chemolithoautotrophic growth stoichiometry (McCarty's electron-balance method combining the H₂-oxidation, O₂-reduction, and C₅H₇O₂N cell-synthesis half-reactions) — not a Monod-on-dissolved-substrate shortcut repurposed for a gas feed.
5 unit ops • COOLPROP
166 0
View & openPrecision fermentation (alternative protein)
A continuous chemostat runs Monod growth kinetics with a nonzero product yield — biomass growth and a secreted target protein, the reactor model precision-fermentation/cellular-agriculture scale-up runs on, not just the biomass-only chemostat the other bioreactor examples show.
3 unit ops • NRTL
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View & openFatty-ester vacuum fractionation
Biodiesel methyl esters (C₁₆ / C₁₈) split at 0.05 bar — vacuum keeps the bottoms under 515 K; near-total C₁₆ recovery overhead and ~98% C₁₈ in the bottoms (the two components' relative volatility caps bottoms purity there — more stages/reflux do not push it further). From the ChemSep casebook (Fatty_Acids, as methyl esters).
4 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
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View & openMedia-prep + Monod fermenter
A production bioprocess step: the growth medium is preheated to fermentation temperature, then a Monod chemostat consumes the substrate to build biomass — the media conditioning + fermentation train around the reactor.
4 unit ops • NRTL
167 0
View & openBioreactor (Monod fermenter)
A steady-state chemostat: substrate is consumed by Monod growth (μ = μmax·S/(Ks + S)) to produce biomass — a modern reactor model legacy tools lack.
3 unit ops • NRTL
168 0
View & openSuperheated-steam drying loop with MVR heat recovery
A wet cake is dried in a superheated-steam dryer (steam as the drying medium instead of hot air), and the evaporated moisture — pure steam — is recovered by mechanical vapor recompression (MVR) plus a trim superheater into high-grade superheated steam that reheats the recirculating drying medium. Superheated-steam drying is the energy-efficient route for biofuel and food solids (distillers' grains, beet pulp, lignite): because the drying atmosphere is steam, the evaporated water leaves as more steam whose latent heat is recompressed and reused, instead of being lost in a humid exhaust.
9 unit ops • NRTL
169 0
View & openSubstrate-inhibited fermenter (Haldane kinetics)
A continuous chemostat where growth is genuinely inhibited at high substrate concentration — the real Haldane mechanism (mu = mu_max*S/(Ks + S + S^2/Ki)), a native solver kinetics option (params['ki']), not a decorative custom block (custom_block structurally can't change stream composition, so faking this through one would misrepresent the reactor's actual material balance). At the same dilution rate a plain Monod fermenter would consume nearly all the feed substrate; here more substrate survives unconverted and less biomass forms, because growth is suppressed in this concentration range — the whole point of modeling inhibition at all. A strongly inhibitory Ki can also make a nominally achievable dilution rate (D < mu_max) physically unreachable and the reactor washes out, since the Haldane mu(S) curve peaks at a finite S and falls again at higher S.
3 unit ops • NRTL
114 0
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