E.1.B Polymath Tutorials
Polymath tutorials with screen shots can also be accessed from the DVD-ROM Home Page by going to Living Example Problems and then clicking on Polymath and can also be found in the DVD-ROM Summary Notes of the following chapters
A. Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE)
B. Nonlinear (NLE) Solver
A. Fitting a Polynomial
B. Nonlinear Regression
Note: Getting Polymath. Many chemical engineering departments in the United States have a site license for Polymath and access to Polymath can be obtained from your departmental computing coordinator or instructor. In the event your department does not have a site license, have your professor contact or e-mail the CACHE Corporation at [email protected]. The latest information on Polymath is available from www.polymath-software.com.
The Polymath authors have provided a free 15-day trial of Polymath on the DVD-ROM. After trying Polymath, your own version of the latest software can be purchased at a fantastically reduced price available only to users of this textbook by going to the special URL at www.polymath-software.com/fogler. Options for purchasing Polymath are only available at this special Web site where there are substantial discounts to the usual Polymath Educational version prices. To obtain this very special discounted price for Polymath, you may have to indicate where you are a student and the ISBN number of this text, which can be found on the copyright page.
You should open the Polymath files with Internet Explorer, as there are some inconveniences using Firefox and Safari to run the Living Example Problems Polymath files directly. When using Firefox and Safari, right-click on the Polymath file lines (e.g., pol.) and choose “Save Link As . . . .” This will allow you to save the Polymath file to the location of your choice.
E.2 AspenTech
AspenTech is a process flow sheet simulator used in many senior chemical engineering design courses. It is now routinely introduced in earlier chemical engineering courses, such as thermodynamics, separations, and now in chemical reaction engineering (CRE). Like Polymath, AspenTech site licenses are available in most chemical engineering departments in the United States. Four AspenTech simulation examples specific to CRE are provided on the DVD-ROM with step-by-step tutorial screen shots.
An AspenTech tutorial can be accessed directly from the DVD-ROM home page. You can learn more about AspenTech by visiting the Web site www.aspentech.com.
E.3 COMSOL
The Chemical Reaction Engineering Module in COMSOL describes transient and stationary material transport, heat transfer, and fluid flow in 1D, 3D, and 3D geometries by solving partial differential equations. The user interface of the Chemical Reaction Engineering Module is tailored for the type of problems found on DVD Chapter 15 to solve coupled mole and mass balance PDEs. With COMSOL, students can view both axial and radial temperature and concentration profiles. COMSOL has provided a special Web site for users of this text, which includes a step-by-step tutorial, along with examples. See www.comsol.com/ecre. Five of the COMSOL modules are: (1) isothermal operation, (2) adiabatic operation, (3) heat effects with constant heat exchange fluid temperature, (4) heat effects with variable heat exchanger temperature, and (5) dispersion with reaction using the Danckwerts boundary conditions (two cases).
E.4 Software Packages
Instructions on how to use Polymath, MATLAB, COMSOL, and AspenTech can be found on the DVD-ROM.
For the ordinary differential equation solver (ODE solver), contact:
A critique of some of these software packages (and others) can be found in Chem. Eng. Educ., XXV (Winter) 54 (1991).