Contents

SimSinter

Overview

SimSinter is a standard interface library for driving single-process Windows®-based simulation software. SimSinter supports Aspen Plus®, Aspen Custom Modeler® (ACM), PSE gPROMS, and Microsoft® Excel®. Additional simulators are planned for future releases. When called, SimSinter can open the simulator, initialize the simulation, set variables in the simulation, run the simulation, and get the resulting output variables from the simulation. SimSinter is an integral part of the Gateway and every other CCSI tool that runs Aspen.

SimSinter is used by the Turbine Gateway, but users may also choose to use SimSinter directly in three other ways:

  1. SimSinter can be driven from Microsoft Excel

  2. SimSinter comes with multiple command line tools for running jobs, getting data from simulators, and debugging.

  3. SimSinter comes with a GUI for generating the Sinter Config files.

Further documentation about how to use SimSinter is available in the SimSinter User Manual.

In order to drive a simulation SimSinter requires two files:

  1. The simulation file to run. The simulation file is simulator specific. It defines the simulation for the simulator. For example, for AspenPlus this file may be a .bkp or .apw file.

  2. The sinter configuration file. This file gives meta-data about all the input and output variables the simulation writer thinks the user might find useful, including name, type, defaults, units, and possible min and max values. This file is in JSON format.

Contact and Support

There are multiple ways to contact the development team, get support, file a bug, make a feature request and even contribute code changes to SimSinter:

  • Send a private email to ccsi-support@acceleratecarboncapture.org for contacting an internal set of developers.

  • Subscribe to and send an email to our ccsi-users@acceleratecarboncapture.org public discussion forum to ask a question of the existing user base.

  • Use any of the public GitHub features:

    • Open a new Issue if you believe you’ve found a bug (please include detailed steps on how to reproduce the error, including if possible, screenshots and log files.) This is also where you can make feature requests.

    • Contribute changes to the SimSinter project by opening a Pull Request

General information about the Carbon Capture Simulation for Industry Impact (CCSI2) project, of which SimSinter is a part, can be found on the https://www.acceleratecarboncapture.org/ web site.