Project description: Pro-II

CAPE-OPEN standards provide an open interface that allows seamless integration of CAPE modules from various software vendors. SimSci-Esscor has embarked on a project designed to provide its flagship process simulation software, PRO/II, with open interoperability, integration, and reusability through emerging CAPE-OPEN standards.

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. CAPE-OPEN is an emerging standard that is gaining acceptance in process simulation and SimSci-Esscor is committed to providing this functionality within the PRO/II environment.

Benefits achieved

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 PRO/II 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.