Numerical Calculations for Process Engineering Using Excel VBA

Chi M. Phan's guide shows how process engineering calculations can be carried out numerically in Excel, with VBA as the programming layer. It concentrates on tasks engineers meet routinely: working out material and energy balances, optimising reactors, and building models in which many variables interact.

Readers are given a range of code, from introductory routines to advanced ones. Core techniques appear in several versions, each adjusted to a particular use, and macros are often combined to tackle a single problem. Illustrative cases pair the bisection method with binary search to optimise an implicit correlation, join golden section search to Euler's method to optimise a reactor, and merge bisection with Euler's method to find a steady-state heat distribution. Less conventional approaches, harmony search and network analysis, are also included.

The worked problems cover adiabatic flame temperature, conversion in a plug flow reactor, batch reactor behaviour, heat diffusion, and pinch analysis of heat exchanger networks. Each VBA program is presented alongside its mathematical equations and flowcharts so the method can be adapted to other problems. Numerous step-by-step demonstrations guide users through the techniques, and reference sections summarise VBA commands and functions together with the Excel worksheet functions that can be called from VBA.

The book is written mainly for undergraduate students, but postgraduate students and practising engineers will also find it useful.