Chemical Engineering Numerical Analysis with R: Peng–Robinson Equation of State

Abstract

Likely, many text on MATLAB, C++, FORTRAN, and Python programming languages exists in chemical engineering libraries, discussing their applications for chemical engineering numerical analysis. R programming language, which has been in existence for more than 40 years, is just evolving as a language of choice for data analytics in science and engineering. Here, it is shown that numerical analysis with equations of state (EOS), especially the Peng–Robinson EOS, typically taught in undergraduate chemical engineering introductory courses can be solved with a developed or existing R source codes. Out of several other mathematical methods, including fixed-point iteration, Regula-Falsi, bisection, and their modified/hybrid methods recently developed, only Secant and Newton’s method algorithm were followed to solve a sample problem by writing an R program. Although sufficient, in-depth study of the R language using some recommended manuals in this work can be a guide in implementing a solution with R for other numerical methods, for the same problem, as well as several other existing analytical and statistical chemical engineering problems out there.