The UNIT Special Interest Group (SIG) has issued today to CO-LaN Members a Request For Comments (RFC) on a new version of the Petroleum Fractions interface specification.
A Petroleum Fractions interface specification exists in version 1.0 of the CAPE-OPEN standard. Since it was faced with several design issues, the UNIT SIG has conducted a complete redesign of this interface specification to be considered as an extension to version 1.1 of the CAPE-OPEN standard. Many aspects of this redesign were presented and discussed within the annual reports made by the UNIT SIG at CAPE-OPEN Annual Meetings (2016, 2017, 2019).
The proposed interface allows Unit Operations to read and modify properties specific to the petroleum and gas industry, such as cloud point, pour point, and Reid vapour pressure. The interface also allows run-time re-characterization of the properties of a petroleum fraction (e.g. Normal Boiling Point, Molecular Weight, Specific Gravity, Critical Temperature, etc…). Indeed many of the Unit Operations specific to the petroleum and gas industry are reactors (cat-crackers, hydrocracker, etc…) that change compound property values of petroleum fractions.
The scope given to the design is the following:
- Only interactions on petroleum fractions between a PME and Unit Operations are considered in this revised interface specification.
- Furthermore, only Property Packages native to the PME are considered. Hence interaction regarding petroleum fractions between a PME and external Property Packages is out of scope.
- Curve properties are excluded from the scope.
- Functionality of blend rules is not carried through the newly proposed CAPE-OPEN interfaces.
The new interface specification has been prototyped by AVEVA and by Shell in their software applications.
CO-LaN members have till December 1, 2021 to provide their comments.