AbstractIn this paper, we propose a new energy-preserving scheme and a new momentum-preserving scheme for the modified regularized long wave equation. The proposed schemes are designed by using the discrete variational derivative method and the finite volume element method. For comparison, we also propose a finite volume element scheme. The conservation properties of the proposed schemes are analyzed and we find that the energy-preserving scheme can precisely conserve the discrete total mass and total energy, the momentum-preserving scheme can precisely conserve the discrete total mass and total momentum, while the finite volume element scheme merely conserve the discrete total mass. We also analyze their linear stability property using the Von Neumann theory and find that the proposed schemes are unconditionally linear stable. Finally, we present some numerical examples to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.