COCO Simulator — The Complete Guide: A Free CAPE-OPEN Process Simulator
COCO from AmsterCHEM is a chemical flowsheet simulation environment: you connect separators, heat exchangers, reactors, pumps and compressors, and get solved mass and energy balances. It is free for academic and professional use, but it is not open source.
COCO Simulator
AmsterCHEM
A free CAPE-OPEN process simulator that works together with ChemSep.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- COFE — a graphical interface for building and solving the flowsheet.
- TEA — a thermodynamic package with a database of hundreds of components.
- Unit operations — mixers, splitters, heat exchangers, pumps and simple reactors.
- ChemSep LITE — bundled for distillation and extraction column design.
- CAPE-OPEN — plugging in models and units from other vendors.
What to know
COCO runs only on Windows, and the interface is functional rather than polished. On the other hand, it is stable and very well suited to chemical engineering courses and order-of-magnitude process checks. Thanks to the CAPE-OPEN standard, components from other programs can be combined with it.
Related tools
The other free simulator, open source and cross-platform — DWSIM. For detailed columns — ChemSep LITE. For fluid properties — CoolProp.
DWSIM
DWSIM Project
Steady-state and dynamic process simulation for chemical plants.
Get it from the vendor
ChemSep LITE
ChemSep / Harry Kooijman & Ross Taylor
Distillation, absorption and extraction column design — the free edition is limited in problem size.
Get it from the vendor
CoolProp
CoolProp Project
Thermophysical property data for over a hundred fluids, callable from any language.
Get it from the vendor
Cantera
Cantera Developers
Chemical kinetics, thermodynamics and transport, callable from Python or MATLAB.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
COCO together with ChemSep is a serious free alternative to the commercial simulators — especially for study and quick checks.