A CUBIC SPLINE COLLOCATION METHOD FOR INTEGRATING A CLASS OF CHEMICAL REACTOR EQUATIONS

Abstract

In this paper, the cubic spline collocation method is implemented to find the numerical solution of the nonlinear partial differential equations PDEs of a plug flow reactor model. The method is proposed in order to be used for the operation of numerical simulations. We use the horizontal method of lines to discretize the temporal variable and the spatial variable by means of a Crank Nicolson, and a cubic spline collocation method on meshes, respectively. The method is shown to be unconditionally stable and second order accurate with respect to both the variables. Numerical results are presented and compared with other collocation methods given in the literature.