Matthias starts with explaining the motivations behind this project and also the main differences between a process simulator considering liquid and gas phases, and a process simulator targeted at solid phases. The point made is that handling solids requires a very complex information structure. Matthias goes on with describing commercial simulators as they stand in terms of resolution approach, level of detail and complexity. He then lists the requirements set for a simulator for solids processes before reminding everyone of the past activities of TUHH in this domain.
The development strategy for the SolidSim project relies on a large number of academic partners, each with scientific strength in a specific area, leading to the development of unit operations. The project timetable starts in Demcember 2013 and extends to March 2013.
An overview of SolidSim as a process simulation environment is then given showing that SolidSim comprises a simulation environment with material stream objects (i.e. Material Objects) and Unit Operations. SolidSim uses CAPE-OPEN interfaces wherever it is possible. Matthias recognizes that adopting CAPE-OPEN leads to a much shorter development time since the interface structures are already defined. Still CAPE-OPEN interfaces are not capable to handle distributed properties like the ones necessary for properties related to solids.
So TUHH has made a proposal for an extension of version 1.1 of the Thermodynamic and Physical Properties interface specification adding the ICapeDistributedProperty interface and having a number of existing methods returning a CapeInterface pointer rather than a value.