The 5th Working Conference of the Process Systems Committee under the China Petroleum and Chemical Engineering Survey and Design Association (CPCESDA) was recently held in Wuxi. The conference was convened to implement the national strategic directives on accelerating the development of a new energy system, promote the synergistic development of "green and low-carbon" initiatives with clean energy, and drive technological innovation in new energy and new materials, as well as the transformation of intelligent design models. The event also focused on the revision, upgrade, and development of industry standards during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, while summarizing the committee's annual achievements and outlining tasks for the upcoming phase. At the conference, SimTech delivered a featured presentation on its independently developed AI agent product, SimTech Intelligence, highlighting its application capabilities across the entire engineering design process and its practical value in driving the digital and intelligent transformation of the petrochemical process engineering discipline. The presentation drew significant attention from attending experts and industry representatives.

Industry Background and Transformation Challenges

With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, the engineering design industry is entering a critical phase of evolution from informatization and digitalization toward intelligent upgrading. For the petrochemical sector, process engineering — as a core component of the overall design workflow — has long grappled with challenges such as the complexity of building process simulation models, the heavy workload involved in equipment sizing and calculations, the lengthy cycles required for preparing standard design documents, and the difficulty of capturing and reusing knowledge and experience. How to effectively transform mature engineering expertise, design standards, and specialized calculation methodologies into reusable, inheritable, and continuously optimizable intelligent capabilities has become a key concern for the industry.

SimTech Intelligence, introduced at the conference, is an intelligent engineering design assistance platform tailored specifically for petrochemical engineering companies and design institutes. The product focuses on the critical workflow chains that process engineering teams follow during project execution, building an integrated intelligent assistance capability around three core pillars: intelligent construction of process simulation models, intelligent execution of engineering calculations, and intelligent generation of engineering design documents. This approach offers a new technical pathway for improving the quality and efficiency of engineering design.

Intelligent Modeling · Intelligent Calculation · Intelligent Generation — Unlocking the Full Design Chain

During the conference exchanges, Mr. Zhou Peng, AI Product Director at SimTech, provided an in-depth overview of SimTech Intelligence's capabilities in process simulation model development. Traditional process simulation modeling typically relies on engineers manually organizing design conditions, understanding process schemes, entering equipment and stream parameters, and then progressively building and validating the model — a process that is not only labor-intensive but also heavily dependent on individual expertise. SimTech Intelligence provides intelligent support for the model-building process by leveraging engineering blueprints, design conditions, and established knowledge rules. This enables process engineers to complete model construction more efficiently, reducing repetitive work and improving modeling efficiency and consistency. For engineering companies and design institutes, this translates into a fundamental shift in how upstream design groundwork is organized — allowing design resources to be focused more on critical decision-making and solution optimization rather than routine, repetitive tasks.

In the realm of equipment selection and engineering calculations, SimTech Intelligence also demonstrates strong professional support capabilities. Petrochemical engineering design involves a substantial volume of equipment sizing, process parameter verification, and compliance checking — all of which demand not only computational accuracy but also adherence to standards, clear logic, and traceable results. SimTech Intelligence can assist with relevant engineering calculation tasks by leveraging model data, rule systems, and specialized methodologies, providing designers with a more cohesive calculation support framework. This capability not only helps improve design efficiency but also reduces risks associated with manual data entry and repeated verification, further enhancing the consistency and standardization of design deliverables.

Notably, SimTech Intelligence is not simply a collection of point solutions. Rather, it is designed to bridge the data and business links between its three core capabilities — intelligent modeling, intelligent calculation, and intelligent document generation. In actual engineering practice, process models, calculation results, and design documents are often dispersed across different software tools, templates, and engineers' individual experience systems, requiring repeated consolidation, conversion, and validation at each stage — resulting in substantial time consumption and hindering reuse. SimTech Intelligence attempts to address this by linking upstream models, process calculations, and downstream deliverables through a unified data logic and intelligent capability framework, making the design process more continuous, standardized, and reusable.

In the area of automated generation of standard design documents, SimTech Intelligence addresses a particularly pressing industry need. The product can support the output of process design deliverables by intelligently generating standardized document content, assisting process engineering teams in preparing equipment datasheets, piping schedules, and other standard design documentation. For engineering projects, this capability can significantly reduce the time engineers spend on document formatting, spreadsheet filling, and template management, freeing up their energy for higher-value activities such as scheme validation, risk identification, and design optimization. At the same time, by standardizing templates, parameter sources, and reference logic, it helps improve the completeness, consistency, and quality of design deliverables.

The value of SimTech Intelligence extends beyond efficiency gains in individual projects to the systematic accumulation of enterprise knowledge assets. For years, much of the high-value expertise in petrochemical engineering design has remained scattered across individual senior engineers' personal capabilities, project file templates, and various unstructured materials — making it difficult to efficiently reuse. SimTech Intelligence is designed to progressively transform mature process models, calculation methodologies, design standards, engineering experience, and document templates into digitized assets that enterprises can accumulate and evolve over time, shifting design capabilities from a "person-dependent" model to an "organizationally embedded" capability. This represents a significant step forward for engineering companies and design institutes in accelerating their intelligent transformation, enhancing overall delivery capabilities, and strengthening their core competitiveness.

Looking Ahead

Conference participants generally agreed that the deep integration of artificial intelligence with engineering design is emerging as a critical direction for industry innovation. Particularly in a field like petrochemical engineering — where professional demands are high, design logic is complex, and standards and regulations are stringent — AI applications cannot remain at the level of generic Q&A or simple assistance. Rather, they must truly enter the professional business process, understand engineering tasks, accommodate engineering rules, and support engineering deliverables. SimTech Intelligence represents an exploration and practice in this direction. By building its capabilities around core process engineering scenarios, the product demonstrates strong industry relevance and a clear engineering-deployment orientation.

The presentation and demonstration at the CPCESDA Process Systems Committee conference not only reflects SimTech's continued investment in engineering intelligence but also signals the industry's strong interest in AI engineering applications. Looking forward, as agent technologies, rule-base systems, engineering knowledge repositories, and standardized template frameworks continue to mature, SimTech Intelligence is well-positioned to play an increasingly important role in petrochemical engineering design. It will continue to drive intelligent upgrades across key process engineering functions — including simulation modeling, engineering calculations, equipment selection, and document generation — helping the industry accelerate its transition to a new phase of engineering design defined by higher quality, greater efficiency, and more rigorous standards.