PRO/II Overview

The PRO/II process simulation program performs rigorous mass and energy balances for a wide range of chemical processes. PRO/II offers a comprehensive and easy-to-use simulation solution from oil and gas separation to reactive distillation. The product's PROVISION® graphical user interface (GUI), provides a fully interactive, Windows®-based environment that is ideal for building and modifying both simple and complex models. PRO/II is being continually modified to respond to emerging market needs and customer requirements. CAPE-OPEN is an emerging standard that is gaining acceptance in process industries and SimSci-Esscor is committed to providing this functionality within the PRO/II environment.

CAPE-OPEN project

This project’s main objectives are:

1. Develop an independent CAPE-OPEN thermodynamics server with all the components and properties similar to PRO/II.
2. Provide interfaces in PRO/II to give the writer of a new unit operation model the ability to integrate and run any CAPE-OPEN compliant unit operation model in PRO/II as if it were a native unit operation.
3. Provide the ability to run a CAPE-OPEN compliant unit operation with either a native PRO/II thermodynamic package or a third party CAPE-OPEN Property Package.
4. Enable PRO/II native unit operation models to run with a third party CAPE-OPEN Property Package.

The main challenge is achieving the above objectives with minimal changes to the existing code, as this code has been tested and validated for many years. The development has been done by breaking out sections of the existing code and wrapping them to provide the new interfaces. PRO/II already has the functionality for a unit operation model developer to write their custom unit operation, so the CAPE-OPEN unit operation interfaces were wrapped around this native functionality. PRO/II also provides all the basic services that a CAPE-OPEN unit operation needs to be able to run, so the CAPE OPEN functions like the Material Template, Diagnostics and Utilities interfaces have been added and linked to the appropriate PRO/II functions. Finally, the Material Object interfaces were wrapped around the existing PRO/II thermodynamics. C++ wrappers have been written on the large body of legacy FORTRAN code.

Sample CAPE-OPEN unit operation models have been developed to test the operation of the interfaces. Although the CAPE-OPEN architecture is not immediately compatible with the PR/OII architecture, a nearly total interoperability with respect to input and output has been achieved with the independent components based on CAPE-OPEN. The CAPE-OPEN functionality in PRO/II has been implemented based on COM/DCOM middleware as it is tightly integrated into the Windows operating system.

CAPE-OPEN thermodynamic server

A CAPE-OPEN thermodynamic server has been developed independently of PRO/II. We have developed internally a SIM4ME modular thermodynamics server to serve the thermo-physical property needs of all our products such as PIPEPHASE, Dynsim and ROMeo. We propose to use this thermo server for all products, making integration seamless, with standardised thermodynamic behaviour. The ICapeThermoSystem and ICapeThermoPropertyPackage interfaces have been implemented on this server, and we propose to add support for the ICapeThermoCalculationRoutine and ICapeThermoEquilibriumServer interfaces in the near future. Therefore, our thermodynamics server becomes available through the common CAPE-OPEN standard interfaces so it can be used by multiple applications.

Our thermodynamics server includes features for:

• Creating and managing individual components.
• Generating components from crude assays or blends of assays.
• Defining sets of property calculation methods.
• Overriding individual component or property data values.
• Performing calculations.

Multiple components can be created, each being either a library component or a petroleum component. Library component properties are loaded from a library of over 1500 standard components. The user can augment this with his/her own library containing additional components. Petroleum (petro) component properties are estimated from normal boiling point, specific gravity, and molecular weight. Several standard methods are supplied.

Crude assay data may be used to generate petroleum components via any of several standard assay procedures. These petroleum components can then be blended, simulating the blending of multiple crudes. The components representing the individual cuts can be used in the calculations like any other components.

Multiple methods are available for equilibrium and thermo-physical property calculations. Multiple method slates may be created; each contains a list of available properties (K-values, enthalpy, viscosity, etc.) and the method to be used for the calculation of each. Examples of method slates are:

• SRK for most calculations, with API for liquid densities.
• NRTL liquid activities and ideal vapor fugacities for equilibrium calculations, and library correlations for density, enthalpy, and entropy.

Given an overall composition and two specifications, SIM4ME thermo’s flash algorithm can calculate the temperature and pressure (if not supplied) and the composition of each individual phase. Both two-phase (VLE) and three-phase (VLLE) equilibrium methods are available. Given composition, phase, temperature, and pressure, individual property values can be calculated.

In addition to providing the CAPE-OPEN interfaces, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and API’s for several languages are provided for the thermodynamics server. All features are equally accessible from all interfaces; in fact, different interfaces may be used in different parts of an application if necessary or desirable.

eCAPE-OPEN

As the technology advances, we expect the market to demand advanced simulation process tools. Web Services is a term commonly used to describe an entire new breed of application. It is our intention that this project exposes the CAPE-OPEN thermodynamics server interfaces through the Internet as a Web Service so that the interfaces can be accessed from any operating system. The ICapeThermoPropertyPackage and custom interfaces will be published as WebService using the .NET platform.

Conclusions

SimSci has recognised that interoperability has always been a major concern for organisations, but over the past decade it has become a much bigger priority across the industry. CAPE-OPEN standards now make interoperability possible. The CAPE-OPEN project enables PRO/II to embrace this emerging industry standard and provide seamless integration with third party CAPE-OPEN modules. The ongoing efforts at SimSci-Esscor will enable the use of our CAPE-OPEN Thermodynamic server across all SimSci-Esscor products like Hextran, PipePhase, VisualFlow, DynSim & ROMeo.

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