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How the canvas, the unit library and the engine fit together.
Canvas shortcuts
Active while the flowsheet canvas has focus.
- V
- Select and move units
- H
- Pan the canvas
- C
- Connect two units with a stream
- F
- Fit the flowsheet to the canvas
- T
- Tidy the layout
- I
- Insert a fermentation reactor
- Delete
- Remove the selected units and streams
What the library badges mean
Not every unit reaches the engine the same way, and a simplified result looks identical to a rigorous one once it is in a report. The badge on a library row says which you are getting.
Unbadged
51 unit kindsA faithful BioSTEAM model of that equipment. Numbers can be read as the engine's own.
Simplified
21 unit kindsApproximated by a related model — a Cyclone is a fixed-split solids separator, a Fired Heater is a utility exchanger with no combustion. The results look exactly like rigorous ones, which is why the badge exists. Each unit says what is being approximated in its Inspector.
User-defined
3 unit kindsNo defensible standard model, so you supply the component splits, any stoichiometry, and a cost correlation. The results are only as good as what you supply.
Boundary marker
4 unit kindsFeed, Product and the source markers. These reach the engine as feed and product streams rather than as equipment, so set their conditions and composition on the connected stream. They are not decoration — the flowsheet has no material without them.
Not simulated
6 unit kindsA drawing element such as a vent stack, flare or instrument. It is excluded from the compiled system, and a run says so in its warnings rather than quietly leaving it out.
Simulation engine
Checking for a running engine…
Worked examples
Flowsheets that solve, shipped with the studio. Each opens on the canvas with its own chemistry.
Acetic acid recovery
Solvent rate trades purity against recovery, and the column keys are not the intuitive pair: water boils between ethyl acetate and acetic acid, so water is the light key.
Acetic acid recovery with solvent recycle
A recycle with a fixed make-up and no purge has no steady state at all. The make-up is not an input — it is whatever replaces what was lost, which is only known once the loop has converged.
Aerated fermentation
The bioreactor sizes its own air feed from the oxygen the reaction consumes, and yeast has to be declared rather than looked up — it has no entry in the property database.
Sugarcane ethanol
Imbibition water is 2.68 times the dry mass of the cane, which no constant expresses — it has to track a feed that changes with the scenario.