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Standard Flowsheet Format (SFF)

Welcome to the Standard Flowsheet Format (SFF) documentation. SFF is intended to be a universally interoperable file format for process flowsheets, representing them as a relational graph with rich, multi-level data for units, streams, utilities, chemicals, TEA assumptions, and other metadata.

Simplified visual representation of the SFF schema

What is SFF?

SFF is designed to export process flowsheets for interoperability among different process simulators and tools. Currently, SFF exports from BioSTEAM are supported out-of-the-box, but the schema is built to be simulator-agnostic.

With SFF, you can serialize a full chemical or biological process design—including all unit operations, streams, thermodynamics, utility data, and cost estimates—into a clear, human-readable, and machine-readable JSON structure. This ensures that front-end tools, databases, and visualization suites can easily interpret and analyze process data without needing to run complex simulations natively.

Why use SFF?

  • Interoperability: Read and write flowsheets across different simulation software.
  • Data Exchange: Store process configurations, TEA (Techno-Economic Analysis) data, and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) boundaries in a standard way.
  • Web-Friendly: Because it's based on JSON Schema, it can be easily ingested into web frontends, databases, or parsed in Python, JavaScript, and other languages.
  • Reproducibility: Clear definition of design specs, simulation methods, and final cost/utility results helps to reproduce TEA metrics independently.

Getting Started

To get started using SFF in your applications, check out the Schema Reference to understand the structure of an SFF JSON document. You can also view the full raw schema on the Full JSON Schema page.

If you prefer to programmatically pull the most recent schema, you can fetch it directly via our GitHub pages deployment URL: https://sustainability-software-lab.github.io/pisces-standard-flowsheet-format-new/schema.json

All versions of the SFF schema are available under the schema/ directory, for example: schema/schema_v_0.0.2.json.

Example Usage

An SFF document is a simple JSON file that adheres to our strict schema. An exported SFF JSON file provides all the information needed to visualize the process:

{
  "metadata": { ... },
  "chemicals": [ ... ],
  "utilities": { ... },
  "units": [ ... ],
  "streams": [ ... ]
}

Check out our GitHub repository for full examples from different bioindustrial models.

Repository Structure

pisces-standard-flowsheet-format/
├── pisces_sff/                          # Python package
│   ├── __init__.py                      # public API
│   ├── base.py                          # SFFExporter and SFFImporter Protocols
│   ├── core/                            # shared utilities
│   │   ├── validate.py                  # validate_sff(data, schema_version)
│   │   └── io.py                        # write_sff(...), read_sff(...)
│   └── biosteam/                        # BioSTEAM export adapter
│       ├── __init__.py
│       └── export.py
├── examples/                            # Usage examples
│   └── biosteam_export.py
├── schema/                              # JSON schema definitions
│   ├── schema_v_0.0.1.json
│   └── schema_v_0.0.2.json              # Latest version
├── exported_flowsheets/                 # Sample SFF data (11 flowsheets)
│   └── bioindustrial_park/
├── docs/                                # This documentation site
│   ├── index.md
│   ├── biosteam_export.md
│   ├── extending.md
│   ├── schema_reference.md
│   └── full_schema.md
├── pyproject.toml
└── mkdocs.yml

For details on exporting BioSTEAM flowsheets, see the BioSTEAM Export page. To add support for a new simulator, see Extending.