This article presents a GRID framework for distributed computations in the chemical process industries. We advocate a generic agent-based GRID environment in which chemical processes can be represented, simulated, and optimized as a set Of autonomous, collaborative software agents. The framework features numerous advantages in terms of scalability, software reuse, security, and distributed resource discovery and utilization. It is a novel example of how advanced distributed techniques and paradigms can be elegantly applied in the area of chemical engineering to support distributed computations and discovery functions in chemical process engineering. A prototype implementation of the proposed framework for chemical process design is presented to illustrate the concepts.