Excel CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation
The Excel CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation is a unit operation implementation for which the calculations can be entered in MicrosoftTM Excel. It will allow you to create an Excel workbook that defines the equations for calculating a unit operation, and use it in a CAPE-OPEN compliant simulation environment that supports CAPE-OPEN version 1.1 thermodynamics.
The principle is simple; the workbook contains multiple work-sheets that have specific functionality. There is the feeds page, that will allow you to add and feeds simply by adding names of feeds to a table. During calculation, the feeds page will contain pressure, temperature, enthalpy, composition and flow for each feed. These are simply numbers that you can use in your calculations. Like the feeds sheet, there is a products sheet. Here you can add product streams by adding rows to a table. This sheet has cells for pressure, temperature, enthalpy, composition and flow as well. The values of these (two of three for pressure, temperature and enthalpy as well as composition and flow) need to be specified by Excel formulas. Like the feeds and products sheets, there are sheet for in- and output parameters.
A control sheet allow you to inspect all physical and thermodynamic properties that are supported by the simulation environment, for compounds constants, pressure- and temperature-dependent properties, single- and two-phase properties and equilibrium calculations. You can use all of these types of thermodynamic property calculations in your unit operation model. The control sheet also allows you to define reports, simply by identifying named regions in your workbook. More-over, the control sheet allows you to define whether and how to use the Excel solver for your model. Multiple solver models can be specified that will be solved sequentially during calculation. You can even specify which initial guess to use for your solver models.
Requirements
The Excel unit operation will function in CAPE-OPEN compliant simulation environments that support version 1.1 thermodynamics. It has been tested in the COCO simulator and ProSimPlus 3.
You will require a working installation of Microsoft Excel on your system. The Excel Unit Operation has been tested to work with Excel versions 2000, 2003, XP, 2007 and 2010.
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| CAPE-OPEN/COCO Compliant |
More information
- Online Help
- van Baten, J.M., Taylor, R. and Kooijman, H., Using Chemsep, COCO and other modeling tools for versatility in custom process modeling. Extended abstract of presentation, AIChE annual meeting, Saltlake city, November 2010
- van Baten, J.M., Rapid prototyping of unit operation models using generic tools and CAPE-OPEN, extended abstract, 6th US CAPE-OPEN conference, AIChE annual meeting, Nashville, November 2009.
Availability
The Excel CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation is free of charge for personal and academic use. For commercial use, a license fee must be paid. Licensing is on a per-person basis (and can be used on multiple computers). Commerical license fee is € 150,- (if you are outside the European union or inside Spain, VAT of 21% is applicable).
For obtaining a free non-commerical registration number, fill in the following form:
For obtaining a commerical license and registration number, fill in the following form:
For other forms of licenses, please contain mailto:info@amsterchem.com.
Please see the Downloads page for downloading the Excel CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation.
User comments:
Torbjørn Pettersen - Thermos AS - NorwayFeedback - in short - IMPRESSED
I had actually started reading about how to write COFE unit operations, I've even installed C# on my pc, but with this Excel module I think I will use it instead. I prefer to use high level tools when possible.
Frequently asked questions
The installer will not run: configuration error, or parameter incorrect
The installer may fail to run from a network drive. Work-around: please copy the installer
to a local drive before installation.
Change log
Version 1.0.23.0
- fixed invalid VBA reference for new files
Version 1.0.24.0
- fixed reference to example 1 in help file
Version 1.0.25.0
- work-around for using solver if Excel.Application.LibraryPath returns the wrong folder (which seems to be the case in French Excel 2003)
Version 1.0.26.0
- Fixed dependency issue for installer
- Corrected typing errors in disclaimer and license agreement
Version 1.0.27.0
- Added functionality for resolving user macro Add-Ins
- Added help on how to use VBA Macros
Version 1.0.28.0
- Work-around Excel internalional conversion error causing "invalid constraint formula" message
Version 1.0.29.0
- Added control sheet buttons for exporting and importing models
Version 1.0.30.0
- Added the Import / Export model buttons to the example fsd models
- Minor fixes for loading and storing models
- Reloading a model from Excel no longer fails if a parameter value cannot be read (instead the parameter value will be set to NaN)
Version 1.0.31.0
- Fixed missing link to example 2 in help file
Version 1.0.32.0
- Revision in work-flow for importing .xum files
Version 1.0.33.0
- Fixed error return codes in case of failure to create OLE object
Version 1.0.34.0
- Fixed error getting product port by name
Version 1.0.35.0
- Registration with COCO Update (CUP) utility
Version 1.0.36.0
- Getting output parameters no longer fails if value is non-numeric (will simply cause missing value)
Version 1.0.37.0
- updated examples in help file to show Import and Export Model buttons
- fixes to importing model
- fixes to setting calculation state to manual and back to automatic when invalidating formulas
- fixed broken links in help file
- correction to step 6 of examples 1 and 2 in help file
- post-installation check for updates, if CUP is installed
- breaking possible infinite loop on Excel failure after Edit
Version 1.0.39.0
- fixed issue with duplicate named ranges in ExcelUnitOperation.xla
Version 1.0.40.0
- modifications to facilitate multi-threaded PMEs
Version 1.0.41.0
- set various windows top-most
- fixed registration of CAPE-OPEN version number
- x64 version
Version 1.0.42.0
- changed CapeVersion from 1.1 to 1.0 (refers to unit standard, not to thermo standard)
Version 1.0.43.0
- fixed a problem with COCO update
Version 1.0.44.0
- current-user installation option (allows for installation for users without administrative rights)
Version 1.0.45.0
- fixed problems with uninstallation of current user install
- next installation will default to single user in case only single user version is already installed
Version 1.0.46.0
- fixed problems automation on Windows 8
- fixed solver initialization problems on Excel 2010 / Windows 8
- fixed registration issue for Excel Add-in