CAPE-OPEN software design and development

AmsterCHEM specializes in design and implementation of CAPE-OPEN software. CAPE-OPEN is a free available set of standards for communication between chemical engineering software components. There are many facets to the CAPE-OPEN standards, but the most important ones focus on thermodynamics and unit operations. Using the CAPE-OPEN thermodynamic standards, an application can access thermodynamics that are implemented and served by third party software. Similarly, flowsheet simulation environments can use unit operations served and implemented by third party software via the CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation interfaces.

The CAPE-OPEN standards are published and maintained by CO-LaN, the CAPE-OPEN Laboratories Network. Many of the standards are actively maintained and developed. This is done in CO-LaN's Special Interest Groups, or SIGs. AmsterCHEM takes part in the SIGs on thermodynamic interfaces, unit operation interfaces and petro-chemical interfaces.

All major chemical engineering flowsheet environments have support for CAPE-OPEN thermodynamics and/or use of CAPE-OPEN unit operations.

AmsterCHEM has developed CAPE-OPEN interfaces for the ChemSep unit operation, Infochem's Multiflash thermodynamics, Virtual Material Group's VMGThermo, COMSOL Multiphysics' thermodynamic import module, Optimized Gas Treating's Protreat unit operation, the CO-LaN unit operation based on Petroleum Expert's GAP, access of thermodynamic servers for the in-house simulators of the Linde Engineering Division, ConocoPhillips process models, BASF's OASE® gas treatment unit operation, access of thermodynamic servers for in-house BASF process simulation tools as well as BASF's thermodynamic servers, and various others.

AmsterCHEM authors and maintains the COCO, the freely available CAPE-OPEN to CAPE-OPEN steady-state flowsheet simulation environment. COCO has become the de facto standard for CAPE-OPEN interoperability testing, and is in wide use by the CAPE-OPEN community. For support on the COCO simulator, please contact info@amsterchem.com.

AmsterCHEM is also developing COBIA on behalf of CO-LaN. COBIA is CAPE-OPEN's new middle-ware.

Several other CAPE-OPEN utilities are provided from this web page, either free for non-commercial use or free-of-charge altogether.

CAPE-OPEN award 2006

AmsterCHEM has been awarded the CO-LaN CAPE-OPEN award for the year 2006 for advances in CAPE-OPEN development and development of the COCO simulation environment. For a larger image of the award itself, click on the image below. The CAPE-OPEN award was presented by Ray Dickinson (Shell Global Solutions, president of the CO-LaN organization in 2007).