COCO simulator

The COCO Simulator is a free-of-charge, non-commercial, graphical, modular and CAPE-OPEN compliant, steady-state, sequential simulation process modeling environment. It was originally intended as a test environment for CAPE-OPEN modeling tools but now provides free chemical process simulation for students. It is an open flowsheet[1][2] modeling environment allowing anyone to add new unit operations[3] or thermodynamics packages.

The COCO Simulator uses a graphical representation, the Process Flow Diagram (PFD), for defining the process to be simulated. Clicking on a unit operation with the mouse allows the user to edit the unit operation parameters it defines via the CAPE-OPEN standard or to open the unit operation's own user interface, when available. This interoperability of process modeling software was enabled by the advent of the CAPE-OPEN standard. COCO thermodynamic library "TEA" and its chemical compound data bank are based on ChemSep [4] LITE, a free equilibrium column simulator for distillation columns and liquid-liquid extractors. COCO's thermodynamic library exports more than 100 property calculation methods with their analytical or numerical derivatives. COCO includes a LITE version of COSMOtherm, an activity coefficient model based on Ab initio quantum chemistry methods. The simulator entails a set of unit-operations such as stream splitters/mixers, heat-exchangers, compressors, pumps and reactors. COCO features a reaction numerics package to power its simple conversion, equilibrium, CSTR, Gibbs minimization and plug flow reactor models.

  1. ^ W.D. Seider; J.D. Seader; D.R. Lewin (1999). Process Design Principles. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-24312-4.
  2. ^ J.M. Douglas (1988). Conceptual Design of Chemical Processes. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-017762-7.
  3. ^ W.L. McCabe; J.C. Smith; P. Harriot (1993). Unit Operations of Chemical Engineering (5th ed.). McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-044844-2.
  4. ^ Perry, Robert H.; Green, Don W. (1997). Perry's Chemical Engineers' Handbook (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-049841-5. p. 13-53