Engineering future chemical engineers: Incorporation of process intensification concepts into the undergraduate curriculum

Abstract

Year 3 activities focused on incorporating concepts of process intensification into four chemical engineering courses are presented. These activities provide undergraduate chemical engineers with an introduction to process intensification, and the opportunity to learn about key aspects of combining processes/operations to achieve enhancements in energy efficiency, improved safety, utilization of resources and reduction of capital costs, waste generation, and energy consumption. Process intensification involves thinking about chemical processing in new ways such that (1) recognition of inherent limitations imposed by using sequential unit operations to accomplish chemical and/or physical transformations is achieved; and (2) methods of concurrently performing more than one unit operation are considered. This requires undergraduates to think in different ways about the processes they have learned about in their traditional unit operations courses. 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 process hazards, or encompass several of these benefits. Improving processes by process intensification requires engineers to integrate many fundamental concepts and go beyond traditional unit operations. Through activities focused on process intensification, global learning and the ability of our students to synthesize knowledge from different courses are strengthened. Four core chemical engineering courses are targeted: fluid flow operations; heat transfer operations; mass transfer operations; and chemical reactor design. Over the course of this curriculum improvement project, activities/modules have been developed and incorporated into each course. Each activity/module focuses on a particular element from the process intensification spectrum and these are also designed to enhance vertical concept integration. Assessment data collected from the implementation of activities during Years 1 and 2 will also be presented. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.