The potential for effective vectorization of the sequential-modular, simultaneous-modular, and equation-based approaches to process flowsheeting is assessed. The last appears to be the most promising, but the required sparse matrix techniques currently used do not vectorize well. Different approaches to vectorizing the sparse matrix calculation are considered. With a good matrix reordering scheme, the most promising sparse matrix strategy for the vectorization of flowsheeting problems is the frontal method, a technique currently used primarily on finite-element problems.

The potential f o r using the sequential-modular, simultaneous-modular, and equation-based