(535a) Cape-Open Integration for Advanced Process Engineering Co-Simulation

In this presentation we highlight the use of the CAPE-OPEN (C-O) standard interfaces within the Advanced Process Engineering Co-Simulator (APECS) developed at the National Energy Technology Laboratory. The APECS system uses the C-O unit operation interfaces to provide its plug-and-play co-simulation capabilities, including the integration of process simulation with computational fluid dynamic models, as well as custom engineering models and reduced-order models. The C-O interfaces for thermodynamics and reactions are used for transferring physical property, kinetic, and stochiometric data from the process simulation to the equipment simulation. APECS also relies heavily on the use of a C-O COM/CORBA bridge for running co-simulations in heterogeneous Windows-Unix environments. For process optimization in the face of multiple and some time conflicting objectives, APECS offers stochastic modeling and multi-objective optimization capabilities developed to comply with the C-O software standard.