Python for chemical engineers: Getting started

NOTE:  The AIChE Virtual Local Section will be moving to a different online meeting platform in 2020.  The Executive Committee thinks Zoom is a good bet but we want to test it before committing to a license.  We are testing Zoom by holding this meeting, which is a condensed version of Paul Adamson's October presentation.  The meeting will not last longer than 40 minutes and there are no alternate meeting versions. 

Python is a general-purpose programming language used extensively in web development, information technology automation, and TECHNICAL COMPUTING. In this presentation, we will explore some applications of Python technical computing in the chemical engineering domain.  First, we will learn about some of the various and easy ways to get up and running with Python including the Anaconda Python distribution.  Next, we will explore some general technical computing tasks such as importing data, solving systems of equations, plotting results, and writing results to files before we solve some classic chemical engineering problems. If there’s time at the end, we will wrap up with a demonstration of some atypical but perhaps useful techniques such as scraping data from scanned documents and character recognition with deep learning.