Chemical engineering is a challenging field to explain to first-year students. Food production processes are a safe and accessible way to introduce the students to basic engineering concepts. Modernist cuisine -- using scientific methods and engineering techniques to enhance classical cooking -- was used as a hook to capture the attention of…

Exothermic reactions can present safety hazards and there is a recognized need for reaction safety education at the undergraduate level. We present an experiment that illustrates the pitfall of direct scale-up of an exothermic reaction that can lead to thermal runaway. The iodide-catalyzed hydrogen peroxide decomposition reaction yields…

A simple experiment about thermal effects in chemical reactors is described, which can be used to illustrate chemical reactor models, the determination and validation of their parameters, and some simple principles of heat transfer and sensor dynamics. It is based in the exothermic reaction between aqueous solutions of sodium thiosulfate and…

This simple example demonstrates the physical significance of similarity solutions and the utility of dimensional and asymptotic analysis of partial differential equations. A procedure to determine the existence of similarity solutions is proposed and subsequently applied to transient constant-flux heat transfer. Short-time expressions follow from…

A reaction kinetics experiment for the chemical engineering undergraduate laboratory course was developed in which in-situ Fourier Transfer Infrared spectroscopy was used to measure reactant and product concentrations. The kinetics of the hydrolysis of acetic anhydride was determined by experiments carried out in a batch reactor. The results…

Undergraduates from chemical engineering, applied chemistry, and environmental science courses, together with first-year postgraduate research students in electrochemical technology, are provided with an experiment that demonstrates the reduction of dissolved oxygen in aerated seawater at 25°C. Oxygen reduction is examined using linear sweep…