ORTHOGONAL COLLOCATION IN CHEMICAL REACTION ENGINEERING

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Abstract
The orthogonal collocation method is used to obtain approximate solutions to the differential equations modeling chemical reactors. There are two ways to view applications of the orthogonal collocation method. In one view it is a numerical method for which the convergence to the exact answer can be seen as the approximation is refined in successive calculations by using more collocation points, which are similar to grid points in a finite difference method. Another viewpoint considers only the first approximation, which can often be found analytically, and which gives valuable insight to the qualitative behavior of the solution. The answers, however, are of uncertain accuracy, so that the calculation must be refined to obtain useful numbers. However, with experience and appropriate caution, the first approximation is often sufficient and is easy to obtain. Thus it is very often useful in engineering work, where valid approximations are accepted. We present both viewpoints here: we use the first approximation to gain insight into a problem and we refine the calculations to obtain numerical convergence to the exact result. In this later view the method is similar to and in direct competition with finite difference methods, and some of the references listed in the next section discuss the relative advantages of the orthogonal collocation method.