You are cordially invited to participate in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory's (NETL) Advanced Process Engineering Co-Simulation (APECS) Project Review and Workshop, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, October 20-21, 2009 at the Pittsburgh Airport Marriott in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania 15108, USA.

Using the R&D100 Award-winning APECS software, you can effectively integrate and efficiently solve and analyze co-simulations combining commercial steady-state process simulators such as Aspen Plus with high-fidelity equipment models, including computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models such as FLUENT. APECS is built on the process industry CAPE-OPEN (CO) software standard and the integrated access, workflow, and data services of the ANSYS Engineering Knowledge Manager (EKM).

Development of advanced process/equipment co-simulations of energy conversion processes is central to DOE's mission with applications in gasification technology, coal combustion systems, carbon capture and sequestration, clean coal power, hydrogen production, and chemical looping. It is well documented that understanding, simulating, and optimizing these advanced processes are of critical national importance. The workshop is being conducted to review existing APECS collaboration projects with NETL, provide APECS demonstrations and application experiences, offer potential collaborators with an opportunity to interact with APECS experts, provide further examples of why NETL is internationally recognized as a leader in advanced process engineering co-simulation, and finally provide direction for the APECS R&D program and a basis for future workshops.

The workshop will bring together leading researchers in the area of advanced process engineering co-simulation, analysis, and optimization; integration of process simulation and computational fluid dynamics, reduced-order modeling, and the CAPE-OPEN software standard; virtual plant co-simulation and high performance computing; and APECS applications in the process and energy industries. Major speakers will include John Widmann (ANSYS Inc.), Prof. Larry Biegler (Carnegie Mellon University), David Sloan (ALSTOM Power), Dr. Doug McCorkle (Iowa State University), Stephen E. Zitney (NETL), and Dr. Urmila Diwekar (Vishwamitra Research Institute), who are all internationally recognized as leaders in APECS R&D and all have long standing collaborations with NETL.

There is a small registration fee of $138.00 to cover breaks and lunches. Please register to reserve your place by submitting the attached form. For more information, please visit our web site at http://www.netl.doe.gov/events/09conferences/apecs/.

The Pittsburgh Airport Marriott Hotel will be the official hotel for the workshop. The group rate is $99.00 for a single room plus 14% tax. For hotel reservations, contact the hotel directly at (412)788-8800. You must reference the U.S. Department of Energy to receive the group rate.

The expertise and insight of technology leaders are essential for success of this workshop. We hope you share NETL's enthusiasm for developing advanced process systems engineering tools for use in creating cleaner, more cost effective fossil energy technologies. We welcome your interest and look forward to meeting you in October. A detailed agenda is available at http://www.netl.doe.gov/events/09conferences/apecs/. For questions regarding the APECS workshop, please contact Ron Breault at or ronald.breault@netl.doe.gov or Steve Zitney at or stephen.zitney@netl.doe.gov