Saudi Arabian Petrochemical Company (SAPCO), a petrochemicals manufacturer, has decided to make some major internal changes to gain increased market share and continue its success. It has been easy going for some time now, and business has been very good, but in order to take that next step, SAPCO needs to attain the Responsible Care…

A chemical engineering PhD student from Purdue University completed an internship at The Dow Chemical Company, evaluating the effect of scale on the hydrodynamics of a trickle bed reactor. A unique aspect of this work was that it arose from an ongoing collaboration, so that the project was within the scope of the graduate student's thesis. This…

Flooded heat exchangers are often used in industry to reduce the required heat-transfer area and the size of utility control valves. These units involve a condensing vapor on the hot side that accumulates as a liquid phase in the lower part of the vessel. The heat transfer occurs mostly in the vapor space, but the condensate becomes somewhat…

Calcium looping is based on the simple premise of the reversible reaction between CO[subscript 2] and CaO. This reaction can be used for separation of CO2 from a mixture of gases; most notably the technology finds applications in CO[subscript 2] removal from gas streams in fossil fuel-based energy systems. This article gives a brief overview of…

Understanding catalytic chemistry, collecting and interpreting kinetic data, and operating chemical reactors are critical skills for chemical engineers. This laboratory experiment provides students with a hands-on supplement to a course in chemical kinetics and reaction engineering. The oxidation of methane with a palladium catalyst supported on…

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) provide significant STEM degrees to African Americans. Initiatives toward increasing diversity in STEM fields have been implemented by government and industry leaders. HBCUs annually award over 20% of all African American baccalaureate chemical engineering degrees. This speaks volume to the…

US high school (HS) students are lagging behind their foreign peers in math performance. It is thus necessary to design teaching modules that motivate US HS students to learn more math and to improve their math skills. Our study set out to test two different software programs designed for the development of such skills. MATLAB Simulink provides a…

Most undergraduate mass transfer and separation courses cover the design of distillation columns, and many undergraduate laboratories have distillation experiments. In many cases, the treatment is restricted to simple column configurations and simplifying assumptions are made so as to convey only the basic concepts. In industry, the analysis of a…

The Escola Tècnica Superior d'Enginyeria Química has a long tradition in the deployment of social competencies in engineering curricula through Integrated Projects (IP) carried out in structured teams. Social competencies are taught and practiced during the development of the IPs. We conceptually introduce a methodology for a 360 degrees…

Microfluidics involves the study of the behavior of fluids at microscale, fluid manipulations, and the design of the devices that can effectively perform such manipulations. We are developing two new elective courses to include microfluidics in our curriculum at CSULB. Herein, we present the results of the first course, Microfabrication and…

The paper explores the effectiveness of hands-on learning (HOL) as a student-centered model to train first year chemical engineering undergraduates. The pedagogical design of the course uses laboratory sessions, lectures, reflection sessions, projects, and assessments to achieve the course learning outcomes. The adopted assessment methodology…

We developed and tested a pedagogical strategy--asset-based design challenges--to enhance diversity in early chemical engineering coursework. Using qualitative methods, we found first-year students justified high-cost solutions with ethical arguments; teams that included rural expertise argued instead for economically-viable solutions. In the…

Background: Data commentary, in-text comments on the visual presentation of data, is acknowledged as a central aspect of academic writing in many engineering disciplines. At the same time, it is a feature that has been shown to be challenging for students. One of the genres in which data commentary plays a significant role in many engineering…

In view of potential demand for skilled engineers and competent researchers in the biofuels field, we have identified a significant gap between advanced biofuels research and undergraduate biofuels education in chemical engineering. To help bridge this gap, we created educational materials that systematically integrate biofuels technologies into…

Robust and fast methods for chemical or multiphase equilibrium calculation are routinely needed by chemical-process engineers working on sizing or simulation aspects. Yet, while industrial applications essentially require calculation tools capable of discriminating between stable and nonstable states and converging to nontrivial solutions,…