SFILES 2.0 - an extended text-based flowsheet representation

This tool converts between PFD and P&ID graphs and SFILES 2.0 strings, a text-based notation for chemical process flowsheets. The accompanying paper describes the structure of the graphs, the notation rules of SFILES 2.0, and the conversion algorithm.

SFILES is a text-based notation for chemical process flowsheets. It was originally proposed by d'Anterroches (see the SFILES 2.0 paper below for the reference), who was inspired by the text-based SMILES notation for molecules. A text-based format has several advantages over flowsheet images regarding storage, computational accessibility, and data analysis and processing. However, the original SFILES version cannot describe essential flowsheet configurations unambiguously, such as the distinction between top and bottom products, and it cannot describe the control structure required for the safe and reliable operation of chemical processes. In addition, there was no publicly available software for encoding or decoding chemical process topologies to SFILES.

SFILES 2.0 provides a complete description of an extended notation and naming conventions, together with open-source software for the automated conversion between flowsheet graphs and SFILES 2.0 strings. We hope to encourage researchers and engineers to publish their flowsheet topologies as SFILES 2.0 strings. The ultimate goal is to establish standards for a FAIR database of chemical process flowsheets.

SFILES 2.0 is used in our work on autocompletion, autocorrection, and P&ID generation.

Open-source code

The source code is available on GitHub.

Key publications

• Vogel, G., Hirtreiter, E., Schulze Balhorn, L., & Schweidtmann, A. M. (2023). SFILES 2.0: An extended text-based flowsheet representation. Optimization and Engineering, 24, 2911–2933. doi:10.1007/s11081-023-09798-9 · Details