Tubular Reactor Modeling with MATLAB

Simulating chemical reactors is a core competency for modern chemical engineers, yet translating physical systems into solvable mathematical equations can feel daunting. This text-only course provides a clear, step-by-step pathway to modeling steady-state tubular reactors with multiple simultaneous reactions. You will learn how to conceptualize reactor dynamics and solve the resulting differential equations numerically. What you'll learn: - Understand the foundational mass and energy balances that govern steady-state tubular reactors. - Formulate boundary value problems (BVPs) for chemical systems with multiple reaction pathways. - Implement numerical solvers in MATLAB, utilizing modern programming practices and robust solver functions like bvp4c. - Apply appropriate boundary conditions to accurately represent physical reactor inlets and outlets. - Analyze concentration and temperature profiles along the reactor length to optimize performance. Your learning journey begins with key chemical engineering terminology and the derivation of governing differential equations. From there, you will progress to structuring and writing clean MATLAB code to solve these equations, visualizing the reactor's behavior through step-by-step written code walkthroughs. This course is designed for undergraduate chemical engineering students, researchers, and practicing professionals who want to build a solid foundation in numerical modeling. Familiarity with basic calculus is helpful, but no prior advanced programming experience is required. Start mastering chemical reactor simulation and boundary value problems today.