A Laboratory Course to Teach Chemical Manufacturing

主导化工制造业规划、发展和成功的两个关键问题是产品质量和环境。传统的本科化学工程教育强调基础，但对产品质量和环保化学制造等过激制造问题的考虑并未纳入课程。这个项目提供了一系列相关的实验，以制造和评估一种常见的化工产品，即聚甲基丙烯酸甲酯的质量为中心。这些实验可以合并到一个为期两学期的单元操作实验序列中。该项目继续采用现有的、非常成功的科学和工程基础教学范例。同时，它允许将产品质量和环境责任的原则整合到实验室中。此外，该项目改进了其他几门必修课和选修课，因为基于实验的简短教学模块可以渗透到这些课程中，在几个学期的本科教育中不断加强化学制造的基础。该项目位于化学工程系，但可以通过跨学科选修课和南卡罗来纳州荣誉学院提供这些实验的要素和教学模块，从而影响其他学科，尤其是机械工程。

Two critical issues that dominate planning, growth, and success of the chemical manufacturing industry are product quality and the environment. Traditional undergraduate chemical engineering education emphasizes fundamentals, but consideration of the over-reaching manufacturing issues of product quality and environmentally conscious chemical manufacturing has not been integrated into the curriculum. This project provides an interrelated series of experiments centered upon manufacturing and evaluating the quality of a familiar chemical product, namely poly(methyl methacrylate). These experiments can be incorporated into a 2-semester unit operations laboratory sequence. This project continues to employ the existing, highly successful paradigm of teaching science and engineering fundamentals. At the same time, it allows for the integration of the principles of product quality and environmental accountability into the laboratory. Furthermore, this project improves several other required and elective lecture courses, as short teaching modules based on the experiments can be disseminated into those courses, providing continual reinforcement of the fundamentals of chemical manufacturing throughout several semesters of undergraduate education. This project is located in the Department of Chemical Engineering but can affect other disciplines, most notably Mechanical Engineering, by offering elements of these experiments and the teaching modules through interdisciplinary electives and the South Carolina Honors College.