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

Abstract

Likely, many text on MATLAB, C++, FORTRAN and Python programming languages exist 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.