A RECURSIVE RELATIONAL DATA BASE STRUCTURE FOR CHEMICAL PROCESS

Abstract

A fundamental solution to the problem of the structure of a comprehensive relational data base for chemical process data is proposed. The proposed data base structure can hold data about the physical attributes of chemical processes and about their reactants, products, and catalysts. By means of a relation that essentially contains both process composition and process stream (flow) recursive relationships, the data base also holds data about the breakdown of any process into its subprocesses, their subprocesses, and so on, to any desired breakdown level, and about how these subprocesses connect to form flow networks at each level of decomposition. The relational data base language SQL can easily be used with the data base, which makes it suitable for field use in remote locations. Where molecular substructure data is also needed, then the chemical process data base can be used with a comprehensive relational molecular structure data base.