CHEMKIN Overview
CHEMKIN, a software suite used worldwide in the microelectronics,
combustion, and chemical processing industries, is one of the most
successful and enduring products to come out of Sandia National
Laboratories.
CHEMKIN is a set of flexible and powerful
tools for incorporating complex chemical kinetics into simulations
of reacting flow. Using CHEMKIN, researchers are able to investigate
thousands of reaction combinations to develop a comprehensive understanding
of a particular process, which might involve multiple chemical
species,
concentration ranges, and gas temperatures.
Since its origins nearly 30 years ago, CHEMKIN has enabled significant
strides in the modeling of complex chemical processes, such as combustion.
It has become the standard for anyone involved in chemistry modeling
and chemically reacting flow modeling. It has also become an important
educational tool in chemical engineering, mechanical engineering
and chemistry curricula.
CHEMKIN's Evolution
The initial driver for CHEMKIN was the need for a more efficient
way of solving combustion problems involving complex series of
chemical
kinetics phenomena. In the early 1980s, Sandia distributed its
homegrown code to collaborators around the world (it is unlawful
to copy and distribute these earlier versions).
Although CHEMKIN is still used extensively in combustion-related
modeling work, it is also used in chemical vapor deposition studies
for semiconductor research and nuclear reactor safety studies.
Since 1997, CHEMKIN has been licensed to Reaction Design, Inc.
The San Diego-based company develops and markets software for simulation
of a variety of chemical processes. Reaction Design provides technical
support and upgrades to CHEMKIN customers. The company continues
to partner with Sandia to enhance the capabilities and usability
of the software to allow researchers to handle a much broader range
of problems.
Reaction Design and Sandia sponsor biennial workshops for existing
and potential users in conjunction with the international combustion
community's largest symposium. The workshops provide a forum for
exchanging ideas and exploring new directions in the application
and advancement of CHEMKIN for combustion and chemical process modeling.
CHEMKIN is a set of flexible
and powerful tools for incorporating complex chemical kinetics
into simulations of reacting flow. The software is a collection
of programs and subroutine libraries, which work together to facilitate
the formation, solution, and interpretation of problems involving
gas-phase and heterogeneous (gas-surface) chemical kinetics.
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