In this presentation the development of a CAPE-OPEN 1.0 thermo socket for our software VALI will be presented. VALI is a data validation and reconciliation software that provides coherent mass and energy balances, reliable and accurate Key Performance Indicators and soft sensors. It is not a simulation software per definition, but rather a powerful equation based software that is used online, to monitor and manage the operations of different processes.

VALI has its own thermodynamic database of chemical compounds (> 800 fluids, > 650 solids) and methods. After demands of our clients it was decided to make VALI compliant with other thermodynamic packages via a CAPE-OPEN 1.0 thermo socket. The project was started by learning about the CAPE-OPEN 1.0 standards in terms of requirements and below an outline of our methodology is presented.

1) Learning about CAPE-OPEN 1.0 standards.

2) Learning about COM (Component Object Model) technology.

3) Development of a Material Object in c#.

4) Modification of the source codes of VALI to call the Material Object routines instead of built-in thermodynamic functions (thermo socket).

5) Development of CAPE-OPEN thermo plugs viewer to allow the selection of a CAPE-OPEN thermo plug from our Graphical User Interface (GUI).

6) Testing of several CAPE-OPEN thermo plugs.

These developments were time consuming and especially estimating the time needed for the development was difficult. Testing and Debugging were also rather challenging because all the thermo plugs were not available on the same computer as our source codes. To conclude, VALI has today a CAPE-OPEN 1.0 socket that has been successfully tested on several different CAPE-OPEN 1.0 thermo plugs.