A bifurcation analysis approach is developed based on the process simulator gPROMS platform, which can automatically trace a solution path, detect and pass the bifurcation points and check the stability of solutions. The arc-length continuation algorithm is incorporated as a process entity in gPROMS to overcome the limit of turning points and get multiple solutions with respect to a user-defined parameter. The bifurcation points are detected through a bifurcation test function T which iswritten in C + + routine as a foreign object connected with gPROMS through Foreign Process Interface. The stability analysis is realized by evaluating eigenvalues of the Jacobian matrix of each steady state solution. Two reference cases of an adiabatic CSTR and a homogenous azeotropic distillation from literature are studied, which successfully validate the reliability of the proposed approach. Besides the multiple steady states and Hopf bifurcation points, a more complex homoclinic bifurcation behavior is found for the distillation case compared to literature. (C) 2016 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press. All rights reserved.