New Directions in ChE Undergraduate Laboratory Experience

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The processing of high quality chemical products requires accurate measurements and control of chemical composition using on-line devices and computer-assisted data logging and analysis techniques. Moreover, the chemical industry is now expanding its efforts to compete in the new areas of biotechnology, electronics, and advanced materials. Yet, the existing undergraduate laboratory experiments emphasize classical fluid flow, heat transfer, and fluid phase separation applications. They focus on direct measurements of temperature, pressure, and flow using manual recording of data and equipment no longer current in industrial practice. The extensive redesign of undergraduate laboratories to include experiments involving on-line composition measurements using spectroscopic and chromatographic techniques, and micro-computer based data logging systems is undertaken. Each experiment is designed by faculty groups active in research in the technologies involved. Six major experiments are undertaken: two in the biochemical area, two in processing of electronic materials, one in the polymer area and one involving a shape- selective zeolite catlyst. The instruments are also used in eight shorter-term analysis experiments. The two sets of experiments are integrated into our two course chemical engineering laboratory sequence required of all undergraduates and thus will impact 600 engineers laboratory over a five year period. Documentation and experience will be disseminated to all chemical engineering departments in the US.