Michel PONS begins by stating that a large number of CAPE-OPEN Process Modelling Environments and Components are now available from commercial software vendors, operating companies, universities and CO-LaN itself. Then Michel PONS goes on by describing the key CAPE-OPEN concepts relevant to the work reported in the communication. Here unit operations are in the front scene so the description of a unit operation through CAPE-OPEN is given, down to the interfaces enabling the communication with a CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation. The relationship between a CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation and other CAPE-OPEN objects is briefly described.
Then Michel PONS describes the processes in which the isomerization reactot of interest here is present. The reaction mechanism is mentioned before moving to the software engineering aspects. The reactor model had been developed at IFP and written as a FORTRAN 90 code. It was decided to wrap that code so that it would appear as a CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation. The Visual Basic Unit Operation Wizard distributed by CO-LaN, was used to deliver a basic CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation as a DLL. This Unit Operation holds a mostly empty calculation method from which a link was established with the FORTRAN DLL making up the reactor model.
Screenshots are then presented of how this CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation can be instantiated and run into Aspen Hysys.
Michel PONS concludes by emphsizing the developement ease and efficiency using the technique described here.