The single-screw extruder is commonly used in polymer processing where the performance of the mixing section is significant in determining the quality of the final product. It is therefore of great interest to simulate the flow field in a single-screw extruder. In this paper the simulation is performed using the lattice Botlzmann model giving a fast and efficient numerical technique. The solution is compared to a finite difference and lattice gas simulation and found to give more accurate results. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.