Supertrapp vs. Refprop (Score 1)

The Supertrapp program from NIST will soon be fully superseded by the REFPROP program. This newer program calculates REFerence PROPerties of nearly 100 fluids from equations of state in a user-friendly environment. The program can be found at www.nist.gov/srd/nist23.htm. Not all of the fluids that were available in Supertrapp are available in REFPROP, but our current work will soon make them all available, at which point the Supertrapp program will no longer be available for purchase.

To clarify several issues that have been brought up here, although the word "database" is used to describe these products, they are in reality only programs that use equations of state to calculate thermodynamic properties. The equations of state are developed using high accuracy data as explained in Lemmon, E.W. and Jacobsen, R.T, "A New Functional Form and New Fitting Techniques for Equations of State with Application to Pentafluoroethane (HFC-125)," J. Phys. Chem. Ref. Data, Volume 34, Number 1, pp. 69-108, 2005. There is no data in the databases, but this generic word is used to describe all of the standard reference data products sold by NIST.

Concerning the copyright, users of the programs should be aware of the Standard Reference Data Act, PL 90-396, Section 6, which states "The Secretary may secure copyright and renewal thereof on behalf of the United States as author or proprietor in all or any part of any standard reference data which he prepares or makes available under this Act." The SRD Act is online at http://www.nist.gov/srd/publiclaw90-396.pdf

If you have further questions about the Refprop or Supertrapp programs, please feel free to contact me.

Eric Lemmon ([e-mail])