Practical Numerical Methods for Chemical Engineers

5th Edition: PNM Suite 5 Example Files 5

4th Edition: PNM Suite 4 Example Files 4

3rd Edition: PNM Suite 3 Example Files 3

2nd Edition: PNM Suite 2 Example Files 2

1st Edition: PNM Suite 1 Example Files 1

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 "I am currently using your book for self-study as I want to be more proficient in using Excel and VBA macros in solving problems in chemical engineering. I first stumbled upon your book through an Amazon listing; after buying the book and glossing through the contents, I fell in love with it. Now I try to read a random section every day and use it to solve various problems in my mini-projects."  -R.L.

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"An excellent text with Visual Basic programs in Numerical Methods for chemical/process engineers, instructors, and students in gaining practical knowledge with Visual Basic programming in Numerical Methods. Highly recommended." - A.K.C.

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"A book rich with algorithms and VBA Code.  I bought every edition of this book. The author keeps improving the book's contents. Even if you are not a chemical engineer ... you will enjoy the algorithms and wealth of VBA code. I highly recommend this new edition for VBA programmers. The VBA code is available for free download online, which is a major plus for the book!" - N.C.S.

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"Un enfoque muy practico. Un texto destinado a ingenieros que requieren potentes métodos numéricos aplicados. Métodos bien explicados conceptualmente. No ahonda en discusiones académicas o altamente teóricas. Utiliza EXCEL lo que creo que es una buena decisión ya que la mayoría tiene acceso a este y no es difícil de aprender a utilizar sus principales características e poco tiempo." - L.L.A.

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"An impressive collection of numerical methods for Excel.  Excellent source for learning and applying numerical methods in the Excel computing platform with VBA, which is ubiquitous in our industry. Many illustrations and examples show how to use the numerical methods in Excel without requiring a ChemE background.  The book's website has a downloadable Excel workbook with all of the VBA code and more workbooks with each chapter's examples worked out.  I tried a few of the early examples from the book to get a feel for how the VBA codes integrate with Excel worksheets.  I found them consistently applied throughout, so it's easy to get up and running with the more advanced features fairly quickly.  The range of numerical methods is pretty comprehensive with some surprisingly advanced techniques.  Something for everyone." - A.H.

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"One of the best books on practical numerical methods. Clearly written with many interesting examples and a lot of VBA code. The best book on numerical methods with the use of Excel programming. I would recommend it for all engineering students, engineers and scientists." - R.M. 

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"Davis hits a home run. The book is excellent, and obviously the product of many years of teaching the subject. It is just what undergraduate chemical or biological engineers need to solve the difficult and complex problems they will find outside the classroom." - S.

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"Wonderful book with macros, subroutines, and functions." - R.S.

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"I just wanted to express my gratitude for your book.  I have struggled with the 'business' oriented help books and websites (which are excellent if that is what you are looking for) for years trying to extrapolate solutions to engineering problems. I have usually fallen back on Fortran code to perform many of the problems you solve in your book. The book is awesome (especially for someone that is familiar with...numerical methods but a little befuddled by the Excel Object model). I feel like a kid in a candy store thanks to your book" - B.B. 

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"Great book with a lot of VBA.  I was looking for a book to learn VBA for numerical methods and discovered this gem. This book shows you how to create VBA macros, user functions, and user forms for customizing Excel. It comes with a lot of VBA macros (about 200). I have been using Excel as an engineer for some time and still found new tips and tricks in this book that I had not tried before. I recommend this book to anyone who uses Excel for engineering or scientific analysis. It is full of simple and more advanced examples of Excel with VBA for tackling problems that require a numerical solution. The numerical methods are well tested, and work as well as computational software like Matlab. A companion website has downloadable files for all of the macros and examples ready to use. This book belongs on your shelf if you are a scientist or engineer who uses Excel." - A.H. 

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"I believe that we should be enabling engineers to use common tools, like Excel, more effectively and so I find your book to be on target." - J.P.

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"Let me congratulate you on your book Practical Numerical Methods. My students and I enjoyed your book and found it as very didactic course material for developing a variety of numerical methods using Excel, a software that virtually everybody will use." - C.C.T.

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"Awesome!!! This book is very useful for my practice as an engineering professor." - H.L.M.

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"I am a Mechanical Engineer. I recently purchased "Numerical Methods for Chemical Engineers” for my reference and self-study. Thank you for having written such an excellent, pedagogically sound, clearly written book, for the student as well as the practicing Engineer. I wish there were more authors like you around. Once again, thank you for writing such an excellent book. You have done a valuable service to the Professional Engineering community, as well as the Student community." - B.S. 

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"Overall, the textbook is good with lots of good chemical engineering examples." - H.L.

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"Excellent Numerical Analysis and Excel VBA Coding book.  The author delivers a big book full of excellent numerical analysis topics and examples in Excel. The examples (as the book title suggest) are for chemical engineers. The book's accompanying website has links to download Excel files that contain the book's examples. In addition, the website has a link to download the PNM Suite which is a powerful numerical analysis software toolkit. The VBA code is very well documented. I highly recommend this book for professionals and hobbyists who use and enjoy numerical analysis. If you are familiar with or regularly use Excel VBA, then this book is a gem. If you have studied chemical engineering, then this book makes you feel at home." - N.S.

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"Thank you for a fine book on VBA for practical use. Great stuff! I am really enjoying your book as I am getting more into using these tools. I've been in the petrochemical sector for about 16 years now, however, using Excel like this was not something I've done before. I think it's great!" - O.G.

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"I teach Advanced Analysis to chemical engineers using your book Practical Numerical Methods for Chemical Engineers, as the text. Our advisory council recommends that our students learn VBA programming, and I know from personal experience (since I purchased your text myself) that you have numerous practical examples in your book." - J.G.

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"Your book is a very good reference for engineers (and scientists as well) dealing with data regression and the manipulation of linear and nonlinear equations. The macro library is a great resource. I found the part dealing with uncertainty analysis very useful, both with the implementation of the Law of Propagation and the introduction of Monte Carlo methods." - L.S.

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"Significant updates that enhance the coverage of numerical methods in Excel. The author added several new methods with VBA macros to broaden the scope of coverage of numerical methods for linear and nonlinear root-finding, regression and interpolation, integration, and partial differential equations. I have used the book's macros and Excel worksheet tips to solve several challenging problems using Excel as my numerical platform. It seems I no longer need to switch over to my other math software - now I can do it all in Excel! There are many practical examples that walk you through the numerical methods and programming macros, functions, and forms in VBA. Thank you for an excellent book on Excel, VBA, and numerical methods." - A.H.

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"Highly Recommended! A truly excellent textbook, I can't fault it. Easily the best source I have used for learning to use Excel and VBA, particularly for engineering problems. I am a practicing chemical engineer with some prior knowledge of computer programming at a beginner level." - A.C.

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"A very practical book for process engineers dealing with nonlinear equations" - S.P.

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"Good book. The price is reasonable. The book provides a lot of exercises for practice.   The explanations are clear and easy to understand." - E.B.

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"FYI – Book arrived 2 days ago In that time I’ve been able to apply some of the non-linear solver algorithm logic outlined in the book to the material balance solver of a home-brew Excel-based stochastic simulation tool ... reducing run times by 30%+. With some cases taking a few hours to run, this is a material improvement. Very happy – thanks" - M.B.

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"My daughter is graduating with a BS degree in Biomedical Engineering.  It will be good for her to have this book since it contains so much useful information. It is a great book for new engineers." - R.V.

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"I teach...to a large class of mechanical engineers and came across your book and companion website. I purchased the book and benefited from several of the chapters and programming illustrations...Thank you for your efforts to make Excel even more useful for engineers." - M.E.

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"Easy to learn from. This book is extremely well written, explanatory, and organized. This book is useful to implement Excel into many different technical careers as well as personal life (because Excel is amazing). I learned a lot from this book ... the book by itself is good enough to learn from easily." - A.C.

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"Your excellent book has been used by a colleague teaching the course and I will continue using it.  I especially appreciate your use of VBA in Excel, rather than math packages that are great for grad students but bring little value for soon-to-be practicing B.S. ChE's." - P.P.

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"Complete coverage for learning Excel and VBA for engineering calculations.  Very thorough coverage of Excel features and useful VBA macros and functions for performing engineering analysis directly in Excel. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to do advanced computations in Excel and learn technical programming in VBA." - A.H.

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"Really liked it." - R.P.

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"I recently discovered your book and it was a real eye-opener for me - I am no spring chicken and have been using Excel (and similar packages - Berkeley Madonna, Modelmaker, etc.) for 30 years.  Your book has a lot of material and detail that I did not know about.  I am now carefully working through the book to pick up on other aspects I was not aware of.  Well done." - D.H.

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"I want to thank you for confirming my theory that books with rockets on the cover are the most useful books!" - M.Z.

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"The book arrived today and I have been reading it with great anticipation.

Dear Professor Davis: Permit me to introduce myself as a chemical engineer of long-standing (IIT Delhi, 1966, U. of Tulsa, 1980).  I am a practicing ChE in Houston.  I studied numerical methods starting in 1963, but without the benefit of computers. I learned Fortran II in 1967 when I was at the Indian Institute of Petroleum in India but didn't really get to apply it when I worked for Shell. Then, I went back to grad school in Tulsa where the late Professor Paul Buthod taught me numerical methods (the text was Carnahan, Luther, and Wilkes) in 1972. Since then, I have been a "numerical methods person" and have written huge amounts of code (Fortran 77, 90, and 95) for solving chemical engineering problems. Generally, I use canned subroutine libraries such as LAPACK, IMSL, or Harwell and have also used code from Numerical Recipes (Press et al) and many other texts, depending on the problem.

Somehow, I never seriously learned C++ or VBA and was always stymied in Excel when I couldn't call any of my math libraries. Stand-alone Fortran code always had the disadvantage of a flat-file interface. So, I muddled along for these last 25 years or so in a hybrid world of Excel and Fortran. I had heard a few horror stories of people coding in C or C++ who linked their routines to Excel, only to run into problems with the interface when newer versions of Excel were released.

I came across your book and immediately purchased it when I saw that you had incorporated a huge amount of VBA code for standard mathematical problems. I now see an extremely convenient and consistent way to solve innumerable vexatious problems, while staying within the Excel environment.  

I compliment you for putting your heart and soul into this effort and producing an outstanding book that should be of immense value to students and practitioners alike. What makes me particularly glad is that you have explained the essence of the underlying numerical methods in each chapter without going overboard on the numerical analysis aspects. That material, while extremely important, belongs properly in courses for math majors or graduate students who delve into algorithms. 

The convenience of the Excel interface makes it ideal for keeping useful applications alive, provided you use VBA for the underlying math. Being able to use [the Practical Numerical Methods] math library will certainly eliminate a lot of clutter and improve reliability considerably in my own work. Thank you very much for recognizing the importance of this problem which I feel certain afflicts many, if not most, chemical engineers every day. My experience with the programs and especially the advice in your book concerning the use of VBA have been immensely useful.  I do wish to thank you for the time and effort you have taken to provide a book that remains truly useful for practitioners." - U.M. 

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"I am a fresh engineer, who needs a lot of help; and I've found what I need...I have just purchased your incredible book.  Thanks for writing this book. It's the best I've found...Honestly." - S.N.

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"Outstanding reference book for using numerical methods to solve practical engineering problems in Excel." - J.G.

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"A text intended for engineers who require powerful applied numerical methods. Conceptually well-explained methods. It does not delve into academic or highly theoretical discussions. It uses EXCEL which I think is a good decision since most have access to it and it is not difficult to learn how to use its main features in a short time." - L.L.A.