AbstractA boundary element method is presented for a steady state convective diffusion problem with a first‐order chemical reaction. In the chemical reaction system the usual conservation law for calculation of the diagonal components of the matrix H cannot be satisfied. Thus in the boundary element formulation the emphasis is laid on how to compute these diagonal components. The main aim of this paper is to present the method of numerical quadrature to obtain the principal values, using the splitting technique to treat the singular integratio