Nice review of the Peng Robinson alpha functions just published. [View all]

[NNadir]

This past Christmas I bought my kid Mathematica Student Edition and have been playing, as I did through much of his and his brother's childhood, with his "toy."

I've been very interested in recent years in high temperature - one might say "explosive" - reformation reactions driven by oxidation in supercritical water.

The Peng-Robinson equation, a cubic equation, is of some relevance in the thermodynamics of this situation. It's one of the "simplified" cubic equations of state, but, um, it's not actually simplified, and contains a number of parameters involved with the reduced temerature.

Last night, in the "ASAP" section of one of my favorite journals Industrial Chemistry and Engineering Research I came across this very nice review of the forms of the "?" in that equation, and it's quite nice and informative.

Here it is: Comparison of 20 Alpha Functions Applied in the Peng–Robinson Equation of State for Vapor Pressure Estimation.

Esoteric, but very cool.

I think I'll spend much of the weekend playing with my kid's toy. Mathematica is a very cool program, but I never really used it, and it's a great way to learn it. I haven't programmed much in 20 or 30 years, but life is wonderful, if short.