On September 20, 2012, within the CAPE-OPEN 2012 Annual Meeting, Sergej BLAGOV (BASF) reported (PDF, 856 Kbytes) on the activities of the Thermo Special Interest Group over the period from October 2011 till September 2012.
The report was prepared by Sergej BLAGOV, Jasper van BATEN (AmsterCHEM) and Michel PONS (contractor for CO-LaN). First the Charter of the SIG is re-stated with its main task being “Develop, maintain and promote Thermodynamic and Physical Properties interface specifications”. In order to conduct this task, the Thermo SIG may count also on representatives from such members as TÜV SÜD NEL, HTRI, Center for Energy Resources Engineering at Denmark Technical University, Honeywell Process Solutions, IFP Energies Nouvelles, Infochem Computer Services and Aspen Technology, Inc.
During the period considered, the Thermo SIG has accomplished significant progress. Within its responsibility to “Maintain and manage existing interface specifications”, new versions of the Thermodynamic and Physical Properties interface specification in version 1.0 and version 1.1 have been released. It does not mean that all issues have been dealt with and new Errata and Clarifications documents have already been started for both versions. Before the end of 2012; it is the intention of the Thermo SIG to ask the CO-LaN Management Board to publicly release the Errata and Clarifications document on the Thermodynamic and Physical Properties interface specification in version 1.1.
The revision of the Chemical Reaction interface specification is on-going. Within its responsibility to “Assess expansions of interface specifications”, a proposal about a Compound Server interface specification is being examined. The Physical Properties Data Bank interface specification is considered as too complex because its scope is too,large. There is a need for a pure compound server delivering compound constants, compound property correlation descriptors and compound property correlation coefficients. A draft version of this simplfied approach has been proposed within the Thrmo SIG and needs to be further evaluated.
Within his other responsibility to “Help organizations to develop implementations”, the Thermo SIG has released open source code examples of Property Package, Thermo System and Property Package Manager. BASF has provided its feedback on the use of these examples and feedback from more parties is requested.
The main focus of the report is the Chemical Reaction interface specification in order to describe the directions taken to modify the current version dating back to the Global CAPE-OPEN project. This interface specification suffers from several issues such as a reaction basis as well as other conceots not well defined. Also such an interface specification needs to be better integrated with version 1.1 of the Thermodynamic and Physical Properties interface specification.
A revision of the document has been made and the Thermo Special Interest Group intends to conduct a Request For Comments on the document.
The report then details the features included in the revised Chemical Reaction interface specification. Compactness and versatility have been driving the revision.