Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

William M. Clark; Anthony G. Dixon; David DiBiasio

thermodynamics as a stand alone subject that has little relationship to the othermaterial. The fact that thermodynamics underlies the material and energy balance andseparation process courses is often obscured because in teaching the methodology forthose courses, the thermodynamic information is simplified or taken for granted as beinggiven in the problem statements. Also, note that traditional students spend about three Page 3.39.2quarters of a year acquiring skills and concepts before actually applying them to anydesign tasks in the last part of the year. Moreover, after two terms of thermodynamics,students tend to forget the material balance skills they

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Wallace B. Whiting; Joseph A. Shaeiwitz; Ph.D., Richard H. Turpin; Richard C. Bailie

phenomena, as fundamental asthermodynamics, and as crucial to the professional success of our graduates as a firm groundingin material and energy balances and process design. In this paper, instruction modules for ethics and professionalism and for environmentalhealth & safety are presented. We use these modules in the senior design class; however, theystand alone and can be used most anywhere in the curriculum. More details are available in anew, recently published textbook for the capstone design class.1 Ethics and Professionalism The purpose of this module is to teach students their ethical and legal responsibilities asprofessional engineers and to help them develop strategies to make the best

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

K. Hing Pang

whichare integrated into the refrigeration system and used for cooling and condensing the compressedethylene to liquid.Design of An Industrial Refrigeration SystemOnce the temperature levels of the refrigerant and duties of the heat exchangers requiringrefrigerant have been decided, the design of the refrigeration system can proceed by contructinga process flow diagram (PFD) such as figure (2) The design of the system involves thegeneration of the material and energy balances for the process. Calculation of compressorhorsepower, duties of coolers and condensers and sizing of the flash drum follow. Like othermanufacturing processes, material and energy balances can be generated through the use of aprocess simulator. However, there are two basic

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Warren D. Seider; J. D. Seader; Daniel R. Lewin

Timmerhaus2 is in its fourthedition, took a much different approach, greatly emphasizing the economic aspects of plantdesign, including cost estimation and profitability analysis. In addition, extensive chapters wereprovided on design and costing of equipment for materials transfer and handling, heat transfer,mass transfer, and chemical reactions. In Peters and Timmerhaus, emphasis shifted from plantdesign to process design, but little attention was given to the synthesis of a process structure.Prior to the 1960s, the development, by practicing chemical engineers in industry, of a processdesign for a given process structure, including material and energy balances and overall sizing ofequipment, was carried out by hand calculations, which were often

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Peter T. Cummings; Hank D. Cochran; Juan J. dePablo; Denis J. Evans; Peter A. Koen; Athanassios Z. Panagiotopoulos; Richard L. Rowley

of computer-related educational materials for the chemicalengineering profession. More about CACHE activities can be learned from their WWW sitehttp://www.cache.org/.Historically, the primary role of chemical engineering educators at the undergraduate level hasbeen to teach students the fundamental bases (material and energy balances, transport processes,thermodynamics and reaction engnieering) for design calculations that ultimately, as practicingchemical engineers, they will perform using design packages such as Aspen Tech’s ASPEN andSimulation Sciences’ PRO-II. Understanding the fundamental bases for these calculations leadsto all-important insight into the limitations of the calculational and correlation techniquesemployed in these

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Willie E. (Skip) Rochefort

direction of the project engineers in the assignment of tasks necessary for project completion.l Mentoring of ChE undergraduate students through all phases of the project.Requirementsl Background in material and energy balances, and separation processes.l Familiarity with the ChE Dept. computing facilities (email, WWWeb) and standard ChE software applications -- WORD, EXCEL, PowerPoint.l Working knowledge and some experience with ChemCAD III.l Weekly meetings with project group. Available for project group meetings T or Th 14:00 - 15:00.l Time commitment approximately 2 hrs per week.Project Deliverables1) Weekly progress reports (brief) supplied by project leader via email.2) Intermittent reports prepared by project engineers

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Richard Gilbert; Mark Maughmer; Marilyn Barger, Hillsborough Community College; Renata Engel, Pennsylvania State University

lecture should be structured the same way and the use of repetitive and remedial Page 3.73.4exercises is just as important if the student is to be successful. Among basic skill topics that Session 1675should use the same formula of a “how to” lecture with a heavy dose of practice includedynamics, engineering statistics, material and energy balances, and engineering thermodynamics.Lectures in Capstone Type Courses Capstone type courses are easily characterized by the almost complete absence ofremedial activity and the dramatic alteration of their

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Colin S. Howat

distillation towers. This may seem unnecessarily punitive. But during initial simulations, their projected equipment is far afield. Other, seemingly more pertinent specifications lead to unstable and unreasonable answers requiring excess student time as they follow false paths. These types of restrictions also help students to focus on material and energy balances as underpinnings to any chemical engineering solution.) • Restrict material balance solutions to an external program or spreadsheet so that they must put their specifications into another program. (Process simulators have robust material balance solvers. But, if left to the simulators, the students never solve a material balance