Introduction

In chemical engineering, mathematical modeling is crucial in order to design equipment, choose proper operating conditions, regulate processes, etc. It is almost always necessary to use experimental data for model development. Figure 7.1(a) shows a data set and linear fit for these data. From this result, is easy to see that this line describes these data. However, from the data set shown in Figure 7.1(b), this is not so clear. The solid line represents the linear fit for these data, which is derived from regression analysis. By simply observing the data, it can be seen that either of the dashed lines could be possible fits. These results clearly show that it is not possible to determine parameters for models only by which line looks a good fit, but that a detailed statistical analysis is needed.

In this chapter, we start by describing linear regression, which is a method for determining parameters in a model. The accuracy of the parameters can be estimated by confidence intervals and regions, which will be discussed in Section 7.5. Correlation between parameters is often a major problem for large mathematical models, and the determination of so-called correlation matrices will be described. In more complex chemical engineering models, non-linear regression is required, and this is also described in this chapter.