Equipment selection · what fourth year leaves out

The pump you sized does not exist

Reflux on the left, Aspen Plus on the right: a two-stage condensate stabiliser built and run from one sentence. Unedited except for the waiting.

You calculate the head and the flow, size the ideal pump, write down its efficiency and move on. Every fourth-year project ends there. No plant has ever bought that pump, because it is not for sale, and nobody tends to mention it until your first job.

Out now

Try Reflux Student free on Aspen Plus

Reflux Student drives your own Aspen Plus V14 from plain English. You type what you want, it opens the case, makes the change in Aspen, runs it, reads the result back and tells you what it verified. Aspen does the math. You keep the judgment. Windows, your own licence, and free to start is a trial with a limit on it, not a free product.

Try it free on Aspen Plus →

Enter your email on the next page and the download link lands in your inbox, so you can open it on the Windows machine Aspen lives on. Windows will say it does not recognise the app the first time: click More info, then Run anyway. The certificate is new and Windows trusts it by reputation, which takes downloads to build. Nothing is wrong with the file.

Book 30 minutes with me → Straight off my calendar. I do the install with you and show you how to point Reflux at the work you actually do. No charge.

Not on Aspen Plus? Tell me which simulator you use → and you hear the day your build exists.

01

What the textbook does

Calculate the head and the flow, size an ideal pump, write down its efficiency. Every fourth-year project ends here, and the number you write down is a number no supplier has ever quoted.

02

What the plant does

Somebody opens a manufacturer’s catalogue and looks for a curve that covers your operating point with margin. It is slightly wrong in every direction, and you either accept that or you pay for a custom unit that costs more and arrives later. The drawing below is the whole argument: your duty point sits in the gap between the curves that exist.

03

The wall

The price is rarely on the page. You email for a quote, you wait, and you design around whatever number comes back. Pumps are the easy case: the same is true of vessels, valves, heaters and compressors.

HEAD FLOW 78% A B C MARGIN IDEAL
Three vendor curves, an efficiency island and a system curve. The duty point sits in the gap: the nearest curve covers it only once you accept the margin box around it.

Sizing from what exists, then simulating with it

The simulator lets you type in an ideal machine and does not ship with a live catalogue of what is actually for sale. Closing that gap — size from what exists, then simulate with it — is one of the things we are building.

We’re opening a small trial to people who ask for it, and we are not precious about which software you run. Whatever you use, we’ll build for it.

Nathan Ruberto · Co‑Founder, CEO

Back to reflux.sh ->