What are CDF Animations from Wolfram?

What is a CDF?

CDF Player is a Computable Document Format viewer developed by Wolfram Research.

The proprietary CDF Player is released with a restricted license, which can be downloaded free of charge from Wolfram Research.

In contrast to static formats such as PDF and pre-generated interactive content provided by formats such as Adobe Flash the CDF Player contains an entire runtime library of Mathematica allowing document content to be generated in response to user interaction using any algorithms or visualizations which can be described in Mathematica.

This makes it suitable for scientific, engineering and other technical content and digital textbooks.

How to get Wolfram CDF Player?

You can get the Software for free here.

But more importantly, you can search for many topics related to not only Chemical Engineering, but to many other topics such as: Engineering, Sciences, MAthematics, and so on…

Here’s an example of Chemical Engineering related CDF files:

CDF Examples - Video Lectures

I use a lot of CDF files for deomnstrations for my courses!

These are very useful as they are interactive, so we can not only model mathematically, but understand deeply the conepts.

Here are some samples i’ve uploaded to my YouTube Channel!

Vapor Liquid Equilibrium in a Temperature vs. Composition Diagram

Studying a non-ideal mixture’s Temperature vs. composition Diagram.

Here, the temperature is measured for the mix. Green line is the dew point while the blue line is the bubble point.

There is an azeotrope formation approx a 0.6

Full course here

Flash Distillation - Cascades System

Studying how Flash Drums are organized in Cascades.

Eventually, we are forming a Distillation Column.

Full Course on Flash Systems here.

Reading P-xy and T-xy Diagrams

Quick overview of Pressure vs composition diagrams and Temperature vs composition diagrams.

Full course here.

VLL Equilibrium Diagram. Multiple Phases

In this animation we study the formation of several phases:

Alpha phase in liquid, rich on alpha
Beta phase in liquid, rich on beta
Alpha + Beta phase in liquid
Liquid Alpha + Vapors
Liquid Beta + Vapors
Alpha+Beta vapor phases