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Probatum · The Simulation Engine

Every number closes, or the engine says why it can't.

Code-to-code matching tells you where a waste code has been reused before. Probatum, the SymbioFlows simulation engine, starts from the material instead: it characterises the stream from its own analysis by first-principles chemistry, checked against published receiver standards, and tries to close a real mass, energy, and charge balance using only values that carry a citation. Where a balance can't close — because a constant isn't sourced, or an input isn't declared — it reports that gap on the line instead of filling it with a plausible number.

Closes, or names the gap

A stream comes in with a declared composition. The engine runs it through the chemistry that applies — neutralization, phase change, combustion, transport losses — and checks that mass, energy, and charge balance at the end. When they do, every reported figure traces to a balance that closed or to a declared input carrying its own source.

If a step needs a constant nobody has sourced — a settling velocity, a heat-transfer coefficient, an activity model outside its valid range — the engine does not substitute a textbook-plausible guess. It reports that line as blocked, names the missing source, and lets everything else in the dossier stand on its own. A partial answer you can trust beats a complete one you can't.

Four value routes

A stream can create value four different ways. The engine evaluates each route independently, and each is built in its own right — not a shared formula skinned four different ways.

Material substitution

Live

Does this stream qualify as end-of-waste, and can it replace a virgin material feed under EU Art. 6 conditions?

Energy recovery

Live

Combustion/thermal value of the stream, closed from its own elemental analysis, not a generic calorific lookup table.

Co-processing

In progress

Substituting the stream into a cement-kiln or similar process feed. The hardest route: needs a kiln model, not just a balance.

Valuation

Planned

Benchmarked, sourced pricing on top of the physical result. Deliberately built last, since a wrong price is the one output that would undercut everything above it.

What the engine refused, and why

Five public reference materials, each put forward as a substitute for ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS) in concrete. The published source for each one identifies it as something other than a blast-furnace slag, so the GGBS standard does not apply to it. The engine declines all five rather than rate them on chemistry alone. Every input here is public.

  1. Coal fly ash, Class F

    Not approved as a GGBS substitute
    Why:
    The source defines fly ash as the residue of burning pulverised coal: a combustion residue, not a blast-furnace slag.
    Ruling standard:
    EN 15167-1 is the standard for ground granulated blast-furnace slag; a material that is not one falls outside it.
    Source:
    FHWA, User Guidelines for Waste and Byproduct Materials in Pavement Construction, Table 1-3
    What would change the answer:
    Evidence that the material is a granulated blast-furnace slag. No figure in its analysis can stand in for that. Its own route into concrete, as a fly ash under EN 450-1, is a separate evaluation on its own evidence.

  2. Coal fly ash, Class C

    Not approved as a GGBS substitute
    Why:
    The high-lime fly ash from the same source. Still a coal-combustion residue, not a blast-furnace slag.
    Ruling standard:
    EN 15167-1 is the standard for ground granulated blast-furnace slag; a material that is not one falls outside it.
    Source:
    FHWA, User Guidelines for Waste and Byproduct Materials in Pavement Construction, Table 1-3
    What would change the answer:
    Evidence that the material is a granulated blast-furnace slag. No figure in its analysis can stand in for that. Its own route into concrete, as a fly ash under EN 450-1, is a separate evaluation on its own evidence.

  3. Coal fly ash, NIST SRM 1633c

    Not approved as a GGBS substitute
    Why:
    A laboratory-measured reference material, certified as a bituminous coal fly ash.
    Ruling standard:
    EN 15167-1 is the standard for ground granulated blast-furnace slag; a material that is not one falls outside it.
    Source:
    NIST SRM 1633c, Certificate of Analysis
    What would change the answer:
    Evidence that the material is a granulated blast-furnace slag. No figure in its analysis can stand in for that. Its own route into concrete, as a fly ash under EN 450-1, is a separate evaluation on its own evidence.

  4. Nickel slag

    Not approved as a GGBS substitute
    Why:
    A slag from smelting a non-ferrous metal ore. A slag, but not from a blast furnace.
    Ruling standard:
    EN 15167-1 is the standard for ground granulated blast-furnace slag; a material that is not one falls outside it.
    Source:
    FHWA-RD-97-148, Table 11-2
    What would change the answer:
    Evidence that the material is a granulated blast-furnace slag. No figure in its analysis can stand in for that.

  5. Spent foundry sand

    Not approved as a GGBS substitute
    Why:
    Used silica moulding sand from metal casting. Not a slag at all.
    Ruling standard:
    EN 15167-1 is the standard for ground granulated blast-furnace slag; a material that is not one falls outside it.
    Source:
    FHWA-RD-97-148, Table 7-2
    What would change the answer:
    Evidence that the material is a granulated blast-furnace slag. No figure in its analysis can stand in for that.

Why this survives technical review

Feasibility studies get killed in review because a number in them can't be traced back to anything. Every figure this engine reports is one of two things: the output of a balance that actually closed, or a declared input with its own citation attached — never a number typed in because it looked about right. That is the property a technical reviewer checks for, and one that code-to-code matching can't provide.

Why it can't be reverse-engineered from a dossier

Seeing an output doesn't hand anyone the engine. Behind each verdict are two things: the chemistry that characterises the material, and a library of receiver limits, each traced to a published standard and built route by route. Reproducing a result means rebuilding both, not pattern-matching from examples.

See it on a real stream

A worked dossier, computed exactly as the engine emits it, with each figure's origin annotated.

View the validation dossier