How we teach: Unit operations laboratory

Abstract

One of the truly distinctive elements of a chemical engineering undergraduate experience is working with larger-scale process equipment in a laboratory setting. Unit Operations courses seek to expose students to the type and scale of equipment they are likely to see in industry and to equip them with the ability to analyze the behavior of these systems as well as have a true "feel" for how they work (or don't work quite as expected). For the 2017 survey, the AIChE Education Division Survey Committee focused on the laboratory portion of the chemical engineering undergraduate curriculum. over 70 programs completed the survey, which asked about course structure, hours, and experiments. The typical undergraduate takes one or two laboratory-focused courses within chemical engineering, completes experiments as part of a team, and has at least some exposure to pilot-scale equipment. Virtual experiments make up about 10% of control system experiments and are otherwise relatively uncommon. This paper reports on the survey's key findings as well as some of the highlights of innovative laboratory experience and pedagogy discussed in the results.