OPC (OLE for Process Control) is referred to as object linking and embedding technology, It provides a common standard for software interfacing enabling communication between distributed components in the automation industry. It provides an efficient integration and interactive function between well known and reliable academic research tools and commercial software in process control and automation industry. This paper investigates the use of OPC as a reliable communication interface between a process modeling and simulation environment and a commercial advanced process control system over a TCP/IP ethernet network. A real time simulation environment is presented, the main idea was to simulate processes where a dynamic model of a platinum refining reactor was developed in Matlab/Simulink and a commercial Model Predictive Controller(MPC) was designed using Aspen DMC Plus. The temperature of the reactor was controlled during a real time simulation of a batch of the precipitation process. A general step by step method of setting up the communication interface is described along with several implementation issues and factors affecting the communication interface based on an OPC based client/server.