(397e) Using .Net Cape-Open Unit Operations in An Applied Process Simulation Course

This presentation describes the author's experience teaching the CAPE-OPEN unit operation standard in a graduate level “Applied Process Simulation” course at Lamar University during the summer 2008 semester. The purpose of this course was to educate students on skills required to make process simulation cases more applicable to industrial systems. As part of this course the students were asked to consider the case where a desired unit operation was not available and must be developed by the user. The CAPE-OPEN standard was chosen as a basis for this instruction rather than a process simulator specific proprietary package. The aid of CO-LaN staff and members who developed and shared the CO-LaN .NET framework examples was greatly appreciated.

Students were first instructed in the CAPE-OPEN standard and then later required to complete a lab assignment to create a unit operation. The C++/CLI version of the .NET example unit operation code as modified by the author for use in AspenPlus and HYSYS was provided to the students to accomplish their assignment. After their CAPE-OPEN unit operation was created and registered they were required to demonstrate its functionality in both the AspenPlus and HYSYS steady-state process simulator environments.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional® integrated development environment was made available to each of the students on laboratory computers based on the university's site license. However, the author notes that the .NET examples could also have been demonstrated using the freely available Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Express® editions.