Orthogonal Collocation Methods Using MATHEMATICA© in the Graduate Chemical Engineering Curriculum

We present in this pedagogical paper several important aspects of the application of orthogonal collocation for solution of Chemical Engineering problems. These include: the Stefan-Maxwell diffusion; the start-up of a Poiseuille Flow in a Newtonian Fluid; the transient heat conduction with temperature-dependent thermal conductivity; and the reaction-diffusion in a drop. The presented method of resolution (i.e., orthogonal collocation) of such problems can be easily introduced in any graduate-level chemical engineering numerical method course. Indeed, this technique has been used for the past four year at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM) in the graduate-level core numerical methods course called CHE 560. (C) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.