Salt Lake City, Utah
June 23, 2018
June 23, 2018
July 27, 2018
Chemical Engineering
10
10.18260/1-2--30019
https://peer.asee.org/30019
542
Janie Brennan is a Lecturer of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University in 2015. Her primary focus is on the application of research-based teaching methods in engineering education.
Across many fields, demonstrations, inquiry-based activities, and other activities have been shown to aid in the conceptual understanding of theory. In engineering, numerous such activities have been developed for concepts relating to fluid dynamics, heat transfer, thermodynamics, and kinetics; these are widely available through resources like the Concept Warehouse. However, few such activities have been described for topics in chemical engineering separations courses. The goal of this work is to develop inexpensive activities using easily accessible materials that can be used as in-class activities (demonstrations, mini-experiments, etc.) to help students understand subjects such as McCabe-Thiele diagrams, ternary equilibrium (liquid-liquid extraction), and/or packed-bed adsorption.
Based on the author’s previous observations in teaching separations, two activities will be developed to tackle particular issues relating to visualization and conceptual understanding in equilibrium- and/or rate-based separations. In addition to the creation of detailed procedures and materials lists, pre- and post-activity assessments and reflections will also be drafted to guide the students’ learning, as numerous works have shown that both a prediction and reflection activity are critical to student retention. The preliminary design of these activities will be implemented during the Spring 2018 semester, and preliminary data will be presented at the annual conference. Feedback and additional suggestions for implementation would be welcome for the improvement of this work-in-progress.
Brennan, J. (2018, June), Board 37: Work-in-Progress: Conceptual Activities for Separations Courses Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--30019
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2018 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015