Editorial Board: Bertrand Braunschweig, Michel Pons

Technical Support: ADDUCE GmbH

FULL MEMBERS PRESENT

• BASF Ronald-Alexander Klein
• BP Peter Banks
• Dow Werner Merk
• IFP Bertrand Braunschweig
• Norsk Hydro Knut Wiig Mathisen
• Shell Chemicals Hans Pingen
• TOTAL Michel Pons

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS PRESENT

• Fantoft David Cameron
• Infochem Richard Szczepanski
• PSE Ben Keeping
• RWTH Jörg Köller

GUESTS PRESENT

• AspenTech Michael Halloran
• AspenTech Daniel Piñol

STATUS REPORT – Bertrand Braunschweig

The by law changes associated with the adoption of full and associate membership have been notified to the appropriate authorities, as required by French law.

At the end of 2002 there were 10 full members and 22 associate members. The issue of membership was regarded as urgent by the meeting and all were requested to think of ways to encourage other companies to join and also to provide appropriate contact names in the target companies. This will be on the agenda of the next Management Board phone conference in March.

The EU has now released the 50k euro refund of unspent GCO funds,. The existing contracts for MINLP and SMST Testers have been renewed and a new contract for version 1.1 Thermo plug Tester has been awarded to UPC.

The CO-LaN web site has been completely revised, using OpenCMS underlying software. The work has been done by RWTH and funded by GCO Support. After May 2003, the web site development and maintenance will be funded by CO-LaN.

A new logo and leaflet have been created to support on-going marketing activities. During the year, CO-LaN members have presented CO-LaN material at 11 conferences: IMS Steering Committee, ESCAPE 12, CHISA, ECTP 2002, 52nd Canadian Chemical Engineering, ICCT, CIQ 2002, SIMO 2002, AIChE, AspenWorld 2002, FOCAPO (2003). There have also been CAPE-OPEN Tour Days at 6 company sites: IFP, Dow, BASF, Bayer, ICI and Shell.

The meeting agreed to accept an offer to present CO-LaN material at the PPEPPD conference in May 2004 (Salt Lake City, Utah, USA) and to seek senior management candidates to present at the IMS World Conference on the future of intelligent manufacturing in autumn 2003 in Italy.

DISSEMINATION

The expenditure in this area recognises the need to fund web site activities and CO Update publication, once GCO Support funding ceases in May 2003. It also makes provision to attend conferences and capture "success stories" for marketing purposes.

STANDARD MAINTENANCE

The bulk of the work in this area is for contracting the polishing of the existing specifications, with particular emphasis on the COM/CORBA IDL. There is also provision for limited support of SIG activities. A proposal to establish a Methods & Tools SIG will be considered, as a means of reviewing new and updated specifications produced by other SIGs. This follows the success of the M&T group in Global CAPE-OPEN.

TESTING

This work continues the activities to prototype version 1.1 of the Thermodynamics specification, which involves the production of a plug tester, a prototype plug and a COSE tester. There is also provision for another as yet unspecified tester. It also allows for limited support for interoperability testing.

During the meeting, the contract to produce the Thermodynamics version 1.1 prototype plug was awarded to Infochem, following the evaluation of the bids.

TRAINING FACILITATION

At present this only involves publicity via the CO-LaN web site, so it does not require a budget entry.

ADMINISTRATION

The meeting endorsed the 2003 budget.

SIG REPORTS BY SIG LEADERS

• Thermodynamics – A meeting was held in Sunbury, UK on February 3 with a focus on the version 1.1 Thermodynamics specification. AspenTech reported encouraging performance figures for CO Thermo in version 12.1 of Aspen Plus, which runs 15 times faster than version 11.1. The SIG agreed to collaborate with SolidSim on the development of solids handling extensions.
• Solvers – There has not been significant activity in this period.
• Unit – A meeting was held in Sunbury, UK on February 3 with a focus on the extension of the Unit specification to modular dynamics. Version 1.0 of the extended specification is due in September 2003, with prototypes planned by RSI and Fantoft.
• Interoperability – A charter has been produced and the current Interoperability Scenario extended to cover parameter handling in Unit PMCs. Infochem will start work in 1Q 2003 to evaluate the issues raised in capturing and supplying the data needed to populate the CO-LaN component data base. The aim will be to simplify the gathering of these data and, in particular, to look for cost-effective ways to carry out interoperability testing.

MEMBERS PRESENTATIONS AND DEMONSTRATIONS

• CO-LaN Web Site – Jörg Köller. This introduced the new CO-LaN web site that has been produced using OpenCMS. It works best with MS Explorer, although version 7 of Netscape should perform satisfactorily too.
• Shell Physical Properties & Thermodynamics Software – Hans Pingen. Shell have produced a CAPE-OPEN version of their SPPTS package (COSPPTS), since they have all main commercial simulators in use and wish to reduce the resources required to manage the overall system. They first developed a working prototype and now they have a working system.
• COGents Project – Daniel Piñol. This project uses cognitive agents to find and configure components for a simulation. It extends the concept of CAPE-OPEN to allow components to communicate with each other as well as a COSE.
• Fantoft – David Cameron. Fantoft is a Norwegian company established 25 years ago to supply consultancy, process simulators and real-time systems to the process industries. They are active in the Unit SIG and plan to make their SM dynamic simulator D-SPICE into both a CO-compliant PME and, by use of a wrapper, a PMC.
• CAPE-OPEN Award 2002. A joint award was presented to Michael Halloran, Daniel Pinol and Richard Szczepanski for their work in the ITF of GCO on the version 1.1 Thermodynamics specification. This showed how competing commercial companies could collaborate constructively on non-proprietary matters without compromising their commercial interests. This type of collaboration was essential to the progress we have made in delivering interoperability and will continue to be essential in the future.

ELECTIONS OF MANAGEMENT BOARD FOR 2003

All of the current Management Board stood for re-election and were duly re-elected:

• IFP B. Braunschweig President
• Dow W. Merk Vice-President
• Total M. Pons Treasurer
• BP P. Banks Secretary
• Shell Chemicals H. Pingen Member
• Dow K. Irons Member

The President announced that he would not be seeking re-election in 2004, so early efforts must be made to identify a successor. In general, succession should be arranged so that continuity is maintained by a process of orderly turnover of board members. Good job descriptions are required.

AOB

The President requested urgent action to provide component information for inclusion in the CO-LaN component database. The next Management Board meeting was proposed for June 5 in Amsterdam, to be confirmed, and the next Management Board phone conference will be on March 6 at 2pm French time.

***************************

CAPE-OPEN Laboratories Network Management Board Meeting. 5 June, 2003

MEMBERS PRESENT

MEMBERSHIP

The following potential success stories were identified to aid in member recruitment:

• CO-compliant version of Shell Physical Properties Package
• BP use of Multiflash in HYSYS
• CO-compliant version of DISTIL
• CO-compliant version of Chemsep
• ATOFINA reactor component
• WellComOn UO
• CPERI Borealis Physical Properties Package
• Membrane Project’s UO
• AixCAPE Shortcut Toolbox
• US EPA Metal Finishing Simulator
• BOC’s use of Multiflash and HYSYS

It was agreed that AixCAPE and IChemE should be approached to see if they would be interested in providing a survey of CO-related activity in the software provision and application sectors.

FINANCIAL

The contracts with UPC and Infochem are signed and work is in progress. A new contract with J-P Belaud for documentation polishing is awaiting signature.

CO-LaN MISSIONS

CONTACTS WITH VENDORS

• AspenTech – They are now confirmed as Associate members.
• Others – ProSim are producing a suite of CO-compliant components.

DISSEMINATION

• ESCAPE 13 – Reports indicated good exposure for CO, although there were few industrial participants. Two CO-compliant simulators were reported.
• ICheaP6 – Two industrial CO applications are being reported.
• ECCE4 – M. Pons is giving a keynote lecture.
• ACHEMA 2003 – Peter Mauer is presenting a paper on BASF’s experiences with CAPE-OPEN.
• ESCAPE 14 – We will try to get a paper on CO success stories included.
• ESCAPE 15 – We need to try to influence content.
• AspenWorld 2004 – We need to try to arrange for CAPE-OPEN exposure.
• FOCAPD 2004 – We need to try to arrange for CAPE-OPEN exposure.
• US EPA – It is too late now for an Information Day to be organised this September, so we should contact EPA to discuss another opportunity.
• An article on Interoperability in Process Engineering Software is being prepared for inclusion in a dossier on Software Interoperability in Petroleum Applications for publication in Oil & Gas Science and Technology.
• NIST – Discrete Event Simulation. We should contact NIST to explore mutual benefits, as well as informing Luis Puigjaner.
• Web Site – Contract proposal received from Adduce, which will be accepted for 6 months, once the bandwidth being provided has been clarified. BLB reported dissatisfaction over the level of activity in uploading information from the SIGs and also in providing component information for the directory.
• CO Update Newsletter – The Board agreed that Issue 6 should go ahead, but after that the format should change. In future the Newsletter should be tied closely to the web site. It should provide short abstracts with links to the web site and be distributed only via email. This simplifies the publishing effort, but increases the importance of good web design and up-to-date content.

SIG ACTIVITIES

• Thermodynamics – This is proceeding satisfactorily.
• Solvers – This SIG is being suspended for the time being.
• Unit – The SIG members must elect a new leader, now that Norsk Hydro is no longer a member of CO-LaN.
• Interoperability –Interoperability tests on unit parameter implementations are planned for July, but more activity is required.
• Approval Process – The Board rejected a proposal to set up an M&T SIG, since it is likely that the same people who produced the materials for approval would also be in the SIG. A new RFC-based system will be proposed.

AOB

CO-LaN Award 2003 – Hans-Horst Mayer is being recognised for his services in supporting and developing the original CAPE-OPEN proposals. The next Management Board meeting is scheduled for Paris at the end of September and the following one for Leipzig in February 2004. The next phone conference will be on August 5^th at 2pm French time. The meeting closed by expressing its thanks to Shell for their hospitality.

CO Update subscription

If you want to «subscribe» or «unsubscribe» to CAPE-OPEN Update, please send an email to technologyofficer@colan.org with subscribe or unsubscribe as subject, respectively. If you need to contact the CO-LaN about the distribution list (if you have trouble unsubscribing or have questions about the list itself), please contact technologyofficer@colan.org.