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Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 1997, 36, 2882
Stretching the Boundaries At DSM Hydrocarbons stretching the boundaries is one of the personal targets we set for our employees. It is not just a lucky coincidence that Prof. Froment was a well-appreciated scientific adviser to us long before we even thought of these personal targets; in him we see a personal and original attempt, and not only an attempt, for stretching the scientific boundaries. Textbooks on chemical engineering and also philosophical books state that “a simple model is the better model” for describing a certain event, let us say a chemical process. Since modeling or simulation is one of the contributions of Prof. Froment to the scientific world, it is interesting to wonder if this was the guiding principle of this aspect of his work. Everyone who knows Prof. Froment will know the answer: no, he did it his way. Prof. Froment took a very ambitious approach for the case of modeling a steam cracker. He used a rigorous modeling of kinetics and heat and mass transfer, which forced him to take much information into account about composition of feeds like real naphthas, not only model compounds, and the geometry of industrial furnaces. He was helped by the development of large and fast computers, which were essential, as he realized early enough, to do the calculations. Probably one of the things which discriminates Prof. Froment most from his academic colleagues and industrial advisers is not his ambitious, rigorous approach to modeling but his willingness to confront his modeling with real performance in industrial steam cracker furnaces, or the other way around as he would probably say it. DSM Hydrocarbons was always willing to share industrial experience with Prof. Froment because stretching his scientific boundaries supported stretching our boundaries as well.
Peter Frenken Research & Technology DSM Hydrocarbons P.O. Box 43 6130 AA Sittard The Netherlands IE960429S
S0888-5885(96)00429-0 CCC: $14.00
© 1997 American Chemical Society
