Forty-three participants attended the CAPE-OPEN 2008 European Meeting, incorporating the 2008 Annual General Meeting (AGM) on April 3 and 4, 2008 at Selwyn College in Cambridge, UK.

While such an event is primarily targeted at the CO-LaN membership, non-member organizations were also welcome: Spiral Software Ltd and P&I Design Ltd attended the conference.

The 5th CAPE-OPEN European Conference comprised a short formal report on CO-LaN activities (AGM) as well as an Interoperability Showcase and an Interoperability Workshop. The Showcase was made of a number of presentations showing recent developments in CAPE-OPEN technology implementation and usage. In the Workshop, developers of software involving CAPE-OPEN technology interacted to resolve any interoperability issues they are facing.

Agenda

• April 2
  • 16.30 - 17.30 Software vendors session
• April 3
  • 08.00 - 09.00 CO-LaN Annual General Meeting
  • 09.00 - 10.00 Special Interest Groups reports
  • 10.20 - 12.15 Showcase session 1
    • CAPE-OPEN in Shell
      • Given that process simulation is so widespread and routine, there is less awareness of other users and the technologies (e.g. CAPE-OPEN) available.
      • Individual run times are less important than elapsed time to complete a job.
      • Number of components varies from hundreds in refining, through chemical reactions to very few for dynamic simulations.
      • Dynamic simulations are much more common now, so the ability to incorporate in-house IP is important.
    • Use of CAPE-OPEN in BP
      • EO is important to facilitate derivative calculation for optimisation
    • CAPE-OPEN in TOTAL
    • Reactions to COCO (abstract)
      • There are general problems with component identification and enthalpy treatment that inhibit interoperability.
      • EnthalpyF has been introduced as a way to avoid some of the enthalpy problems, but it is not generally supported yet.
      • Reaction packages are not yet SIG supported, though it would make sense for the Thermo SIG to do it.
      • It could be advantageous for the Reaction Object to be included in the Material Object.
    • GERG 2004 as a CAPE-OPEN Property Package (abstract)
      • CO2 and up to 21 components can be used.
      • The interaction parameters used with SRK & PR were typical AspenHYSYS values.
    • Black-oil model as a CAPE-OPEN Property Package (abstract)
      • The interaction parameters used with SRK & PR were typical AspenHYSYS values.
      • LNG and Black Oil modelling are increasingly important in the current market.
  • 14.00 - 18.00 Interoperability Workshop session 1
  • 15.00 - 18.00 SIG meetings in parallel
  • 19.00 - 22.00 CAPE-OPEN dinner including CAPE-OPEN Award
• April 4
  • 09.15 - 10.00 Showcase session 2: use of CAPE-OPEN
    • CAPE-OPEN at BASF
      • Main focus is to get the thermodynamics interface fully working before trying any other options.
    • Air Liquide use of CAPE-OPEN
    • IFP
      • 3 – 4 people, including a CO expert, plus Wizards and a Thermo wrapper are needed to support this work and reduce the need for users to have specific CO knowledge.
      • Pseudo component representation must allow property change.
      • PRO/II is used to integrate the upstream application.
  • 10.20 - 12.10 Showcase session 3
    • CAPE-OPEN Studio.NET (abstract)
      • Further work is needed to handle iterative systems and to allow changes to generated code to be made easily.
      • Future versions may use Matlab.
    • CAPE-OPEN related advances at Aspen Technology (abstract)
      • Version 1.1 thermodynamics should be available in Aspen Plus by mid-2009.
    • CAPE-OPEN at the IVC-SEP (abstract)
      • This is not yet generally available as more work needs to be done on stability.
    • Has CAPE-OPEN interfacing finally come of age? (abstract)
      • Since the speed penalty of using CAPE-OPEN interfaces is a major issue, reports from the floor addressed this point:
        • Calculate as many properties as possible at the same time (AmsterCHEM)
        • The speed penalty falls off dramatically as the number of components increases: 100x for 2 components: 5x for 40 components (Infochem)
        • The majority of the time is spent in the Material Object. There are ways to get properties without using the MO in version 1.1.
    • Interoperability testing and COLTT
      • Some form of automated tool for testing would be useful, since CO-LaN testing is generally regarded as useful. This was regarded by some delegates as being a better use of CO-LaN funds than resurrecting the CO Testers.
      • The questions of publication of testing results and prioritisation of testing should be included in the conference survey form.
      • Future Interoperability Workshops should allow notice to be given of specific interests, so that relevant facilities can be available.
  • 14.00 - 14.15 Closing session
    • At the finish of the formal proceedings of the 5th CAPE-OPEN European Conference, Ray Dickinson thanked all delegates for a stimulating meeting and BP for organizing the venue. He was also encouraged by the fact that the Showcase was filled with successful implementations, showing the growing maturity of the standards and applications.
  • 14.15 - 18.00 Interoperability Workshop session 2