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Chemical process modelling and simulation are widely used in process industries to progress in the understanding and in the improvement of many processes. Due to the complexity and variety of these processes, several pieces of software are often needed to model a given process, hence requiring interoperability between software. CAPE‐OPEN is an industry standard for interoperability between process simulation software. Compared to proprietary interfaces of software applications, CAPE‐OPEN allows for less overhead on programming and maintenance, fast access to market and a common basis for collaboration in joint projects.

The use of visualisation techniques, more specifically of a series of equilibrium subspaces has greatly helped in the understanding of the relationships among all variables associated with separation of complex non-ideal systems by distillation. The azeotropic distillation of ethanol/water, with pentane as the entrainer, was studied. Parameterization of the equilibrium surfaces in terms of the bubble point temperature was used to search for maximum or minimum boiling ternary azeotropes. It was observed that the behaviour presented due to changes in design parameters varies considerably when the feed is located on the top of the column (previous work) and when it is located in the middle of the column (this work).The objective of this work is to optimize molecular distillators for producing b-carotenes from palm oil, taking into account design (falling film and centrifugal) and operating conditions (temperature and feed flow rate). Experimental and simulated data are used. The software DISMOL, developed by this research group was used for the calculations. As the distillation is proceeding, the carotene concentration in the liquid phase increases for the falling film molecular distillator. It was observed that the best temperature range is from 150 to 180 C, for feed flow rates that vary from 0.3 to 1.8 kg/h, according to the operating temperatures, since as larger the temperature is, a larger flow is needed. The same procedure was made for the centrifugal molecular distillator. For this case, the best temperature range is from 180 to 230 C, for feed flow rates that vary from 0.2 to 0.6 kg/h, according to the operating temperatures.

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The CAPE-OPEN standard interfaces have been designed to permit flexibility and modularization of process simulation environments (PMEs) in order to use process modeling components such as unit operation or thermodynamic property models across a range of tools employed in the lifecycle of chemical process systems engineering. Technical foundations of interoperable software are constantly changing and Microsoft is nowadays declaring .NET and a successor to COM which has been the major platform for numerous CAPE-OPEN components so far. In order to ensure that the CAPE-OPEN idea will be applicable to recent technical changes, the COLaN has gathered experiences in the area of CAPE-OPEN implementations making use of .NET. This paper will demonstrate that CAPE-OPEN can be successfully implemented using .NET development tools and highlight how the CAPE-OPEN development can benefit from these new technologies.