Employing Machine Learning to Correlate Fluid Properties

This contribution presents a classroom exercise aimed at first-year science and engineering college students, where a task is set to produce a correlation to predict the normal boiling point of organic compounds from an unabridged data set of >6000 compounds. The exercise, which is fully documented in terms of the problem statement and the solution, guides the students to initially perform a linear correlation of the boiling point data with a plausible relevant variable (the molecular weight) and to further refine it using multivariate linear fitting employing a second descriptor (the acentric factor). Finally, the data are processed through an artificial neural network to eventually provide an engineering-quality correlation. The problem statements, data files for the development of the exercise, and solutions are provided within a MATLAB^® environment and are general in nature. A discussion is presented on possible extension of these exercises within the physical sciences.