FREE SOFTWARE FOR CHEMICAL ENGINEER'S EDUCATIONAL NEEDS
Free (as in freedom) and open source software have attracted more and more the society attention, specially in academia. The free software idea encourages the cooperative work and it is a strategic factor for scientific development. Under this philosophy, the users have the right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. This foundation (based on freedom) gives a great deal of motivation for using free software in educational institutions. There are many available software applications for most areas of knowledge, including the Chemical Engineering area. As a result, there are many software tools built on this philosophy with the capability of enhancing the engineering learning process. This paper addresses the use of such tools in many educational Chemical Engineering activities where computer aided tools are a growing trend towards integrating computing and process simulators throughout the curriculum. This paper discusses the implications of the free software ideas in the engineering field, mainly in Chemical Engineering educational and professional career; it also reviews the main free packages available for the chemical engineer's needs with emphasis on numerical and symbolical math processing tools, and on chemical process flowsheet simulators. Discussions on their weaknesses and strengths characteristics as well as opportunities for contributions are presented with examples of their potential use for teaching plantwide process simulation.