Highlights for this release are:

• Improved workflow and interface for developing surrogate models and incorporating these into flowsheets
• Improved wrapper for ALAMO using new surrogate interface
• New Unit models:
  
  • Condenser and Reboiler for packed column applications
  • 0-D Heat Exchanger using the NTU method
• Ability to use external variable for length in 1-D control volumes
• Thermophysical and transport properties:
  
  • New supported properties: Cp, Cv, diffusivity, thermal conductivity, speed of sound, surface tension, viscosity
  • Improved formulation of log expressions
• Surrogate modeling using Keras
  
  • This requires tensorflow, which is an optional dependency of IDAES. To install it, use any one of the following commands:
    
conda install tensorflow
pip install tensorflow
pip install idaes-pse[optional] # this will install all optional dependencies for IDAES, including tensorflow

Deprecation warnings slated to be removed (and become errors) in next release (1.13.0):

• Python 3.6 support is deprecated and it will be removed with the next IDAES release
• Deprecation warning: generic_models.unit_models.distillation folder renamed to generic_models.unit_models.column_models
• Removed support for directly setting state_block_class and reaction_block_class in property and reaction packages
• Removed support for property packages which do not use Phase and Component objects
• Removed support for defining units of measurement via strings.
• Removed support for dynamic simulations without specifying units for time domain

For detailed instructions on how to get started using the the Integrated Platform, as well as examples, tutorials and references, take a look at our online documentation.

As always, questions and feedback are welcome and very much encouraged.

Feel free to send an email to the IDAES support team or for a wider audience post to the public discussion forum at our idaes-pse github repo where the full source code is available.