NUMERICAL METHODS For CHEMICAL ENGINEERS Using Excel, VBA, and MATLAB
The material in this book has been developed over a 6-year period while teaching a class entitled Numerical Methods for Chemical Engineers. The author has taught this class (not continually) for the past 15 years. Early on, the computing platform was FORTRAN running on a ainframe. At that time, students (as freshmen) took a required course in FORTRAN programming. By the time they took this class (as juniors), they needed considerable refreshing in FORTRAN. The course concentrated on linear algebra and the solution of ordinary differential equations. Many of the problems were generic rather than chemical engineering oriented.
When PCs became prevalent, a switch was made to the MATLAB® platform.
Considerable time was spent getting students familiar with MATLAB, but the range of problems was greater because of MATLAB’s function availability. However, students returning from summer internships complained that MATLAB was not available at their employer’s sites. They wanted a tool that they could use in any setting.
The result was to settle on Excel and VBA. There is no panacea; other students who went to graduate school came back for reunions and complained that MATLAB, MathCad, and Mathematica were the popular computing tools at the institutions they attended. It was then decided to add some MATLAB training to the Numerical Methods for Chemical Engineers class. In recent years, almost all example and homework problems have been related to chemical and biomolecular engineering.
Mac Users Beware:
The most recent version (2011) of MS Office for the Mac does include VBA. Students have reported that the Mac version presents no significant differences from the PC version. In Chapter 3, a free software package called Matrix.xla is introduced. It offers a host of matrix-based functions not available directly in Excel. While this package can be downloaded to a Mac, the Matrix.xla functions are not available at the Excel level.
They can, however, be utilized in VBA mode. If nothing else, these functions allow students to view very well written code in VBA. At some point, it is hoped that the publishers of Matrix.xla will support its features on the Mac.
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