Engineering Future Chemical Engineers: Incorporation of Process Intensification Concepts into the Undergraduate Curriculum

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Engineering - Chemical (53)Process intensification encompasses a broad spectrum of activities focused on identifying fundamental limitations in a chemical production route and developing or combining processes to minimize resource utilization and optimize process quality. Process intensification is essential to industrial competitiveness as it can enhance safety, increase operating efficiency, lower energy usage, reduce capital costs, reduce waste emissions, and reduce process hazards. Improving processes by process intensification requires chemical engineers to integrate many fundamental concepts and go beyond traditional unit operations. Currently chemical engineers are taught how to develop a process by linking together standard unit operations, but are frequently not trained to synthesize fundamental concepts in new ways for novel and efficient process designs. Through this project, educational modules are being developed to provide the necessary foundation for process intensification through the introduction of key concepts and prototype applications. Four courses in chemical engineering are being transformed: Fluid Flow, Heat Transfer, Mass Transfer, and Chemical Reactor Design. This sequence of courses allows both early introduction and vertical integration of key process intensification concepts into the undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum. The modules are being rigorously assessed to determine their impact on student learning and the results are being broadly disseminated through papers, the Web, and workshops for chemical engineering faculty.