Development of a chemical process modeling environment based on CAPE-OPEN interface standards and the Microsoft .NET framework

Chemical process simulation has long been used as a design tool in the development of chemical plants, and has long been considered a means to evaluate different design options. The CAPE-OPEN interface standards were developed to allow process modeling components to be used in any compliant process modeling environment. Use of the CAPE-OPEN interfaces and the .NET framework will allow the application described here to develop into a distributed, cross platform simulation and process control environment that can be easily extended to incorporate novel chemical process computing applications. The current effort is the development of a process simulator built to use process modeling components that implement the CAPE-OPEN interfaces. This paper describes the process modeling components and the process modeling environment developed as part of an application intended to evaluate the processes that generate wastes in a metal finishing process. Ultimately, this program will be made available to the general community as an open-source application.