Teaching thermo-chemical equilibrium using a MATLAB algorithm Article Swipe
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· 2025
· Open Access
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· DOI: https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2-1153-52613
The chemical equilibrium model is significantly more accurate than the perfect gas model when calculating constant heat release as pertains to systems taught in courses within the thermo-fluid area of mechanical and aerospace engineering curricula, including thermodynamics, propulsion, and internal combustion engines. This paper presents a novel approach to teaching chemical equilibrium using a method based on matrix factorization. The advantages of the present approach, when compared to previous algorithms based on constrained optimization, are the straightforward formulation and the ease of implementation in MATLAB. The formulation is straightforward because it emphasizes that the equilibrium composition is based on thermodynamic considerations and thus, does not require knowledge of reaction paths. The implementation is simple because it avoids summation over chemical elements and species in favor of a singular value decomposition and matrix-vector multiplications. The teaching effectiveness of the new formulation is tested using an in-class survey. Based on the students’ feedback, we find that this module proved beneficial towards developing a sound understanding of the topic.
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- Type
- article
- Language
- en
- Landing Page
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2-1153-52613
- https://peer.asee.org/52613.pdf
- OA Status
- gold
- Cited By
- 1
- References
- 6
- Related Works
- 10
- OpenAlex ID
- https://openalex.org/W2188409011