Conference Agenda

The major goal of this presentation is to discuss new trends and challenges in teaching the senior undergraduate design course. Process design has been the traditional capstone course for chemical engineering, in which material learned in previous semesters is integrated and is applied to a major design project where students work in groups. A major component of this course is decision-making since students have to select the process technology, the flowsheet configuration and its operating parameters. Modern educational trends emphasize process invention (i.e., synthesis of flowsheets) and the teaching of systematic techniques for design. These include synthesis strategies (e.g., hierarchical decomposition, separation synthesis, heat exchanger networks, energy integration, and water networks), process simulation tools (e.g. AspenPlus) to perform the mass and energy balances, detailed modeling tools for chemical reactors and separators, and economic evaluation. The recent trend has also been to include topics on energy, decarbonization, and evaluation of sustainability and environmental impact (e.g. through life cycle analysis using EPA Greenscope), topics which are becoming highly relevant in the professional education of chemical engineering students. Clearly, the design course, aside from providing essential professional skills to chemical engineering students, is an ideal vehicle to expose students to these new emerging topics. Furthermore, in our experience students have been highly motivated with design projects that focus on these areas, which in turn can help to increase enrollments in chemical engineering.

Major challenges, however, that are faced in teaching the process design course is first the increasing reduction of fundamental chemical engineering courses (e.g. thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer, unit operations) at the expense of the introduction of new courses, especially related to courses in new areas (e.g. biological engineering and nano-materials). This decrease in fundamentals makes it hard to teach the design course as one has to review additional basic topics that normally would be taken for granted in this course. Another important issue is that in many departments the course is increasingly being taught either by adjunct faculty (teaching lecturers) or individuals retired from industry with essentially no involvement from tenure-track faculty. It is only those departments who have faculty in process systems engineering that the design course is taught by a regular faculty member. We believe this is a worrying trend because it means that the faculty is increasingly unable to teach this core course in chemical engineering. Finally, given the recent emphasis on wellness, university administrators are increasingly discouraging time-consuming and open-ended courses like the design course. In this presentation we discuss some of these challenges that are being currently faced, and emphasize that the process design course is an ideal vehicle for addressing energy and sustainability issues, which have become major challenges and a source of new opportunities for chemical engineers for making an impact in the real world.

The paradigm shift into an era of Industry 4.0 has emphasized the need for intelligent networking between process equipment and industrial processes. This has brought on an age of research and framework development for smart manufacturing in the name of Industry 4.0 [1]. While the physical and digital advancements towards smart manufacturing integration are tangible the advancement of engineers is equally important. Assante et al. discuss educational efforts in Europe to create and implement smart manufacturing curriculum for non-traditional or adult learners already integrated in the workforce but little work has been shown previously on the generation of smart manufacturing curriculum for pre-career students [2]. We, the teaching team of CHE 554:Smart Manufacturing at Purdue University, proposed and implemented a curriculum geared towards the training of undergraduate, graduate, and non-traditional students in methods of smart manufacturing as they apply to industrial applications.

Through this elective course, taught primarily through the context of chemical engineering, we introduce an interdisciplinary body of students to concepts not covered in its entirety by any engineering core curriculum. Our course includes, but is not limited to material on, data reconciliation, machine learning, chemometrics, data-driven fault detection, digital twin development, and process optimization. Further, when available these concepts are executed through the context of open-source Python packages, enabling the accessible and practical application of smart manufacturing for assignments and in the context of professional application [3,4]. With the integration of modern tools and Python libraries the industrial practicality becomes evident for students who would otherwise be unaware of these resources.

Purdue University, a rich environment where co-ops, internships, and other opportunities for industrial growth are encouraged, adds an additional layer to the unique preparation of our students for industrial careers through this elective course. Purdue Online furthers the industrial reach adding accessibility for non-traditional and adult students gaining professional development through the course. Special attention to the asynchronous format of this course ensures that the course remains accessible for both these non-traditional students and traditional students. This course develops a theoretically grounded and practically trained generation of engineering students interested in industrial applications. The asynchronous nature of the course relaxes time constraints, while regular and by-appointment remote/in-person office hours lets students access expert help when needed.

1. Davis, J., Edgar, T., Graybill, R., Korambath, P., Schott, B., Swink, D., & Wetzel, J. (2015). Smart Manufacturing. Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
2. Assante, D., Caforio, A., Flamini, M., & Romano, E. (2019). Smart Education in the Context of Industry 4.0. In 2019 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference.
3. Garcia-Munoz, S. (2019). https://github.com/salvadorgarciamunoz/pyphi.
4. Casas-Orozco, D., Laky, D., Wang, V., Abdi, M., Feng, X., Wood, E., ... & Nagy, Z. K. (2021). PharmaPy: An Object-oriented Tool for the Development of Hybrid Pharmaceutical Flowsheets. Computers & Chemical Engineering.

Mass and Energy Balances (MEB) is in general the first core course in the chemical engineering major. It introduces the fundamentals of process design, which primarily involves conducting generation consumption analysis, drawing block flow diagrams for processes, and performing mass and energy balances on different process units. Although traditional problem-solving through lectures and recitation sessions helps to enhance conceptual understanding, students often feel disconnected from the real-life applications of these concepts. To address this issue, project-enhanced learning has been incorporated into a lecture-based MEB course, offered in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChemBE) department of a large R1 University in the United States. The students collaborate on a group project with 3-4 students to solve a realistic and meaningful process design problem. An example project is the production of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) for the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, ibuprofen. The student groups are provided with a hypothetical scenario, where they work as part of the design team in a pharmaceutical company. The colleagues from the pilot plant observe that the current production of API is less than the target of 10 g of API per hour and the design team is assigned to analyze the process to identify the issue. Students obtain computational solutions for the flow rates in different process units using either Excel or Python, which allows them to test the impact of various design changes on the final production rate of API. Due to the company’s goal to move towards a more sustainable API production, the student groups also assess the environmental impacts associated with the current process and reflect on strategies to mitigate the impacts. Additionally, the student groups address the issue of a potential rise in API selling price due to a financial loss in the company, which could increase the final cost of the medicine and reduce its access to lower-income individuals and people of color. Collaborating on realistic projects like this not only improves students’ critical thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork skills but also raises their ethical and social awareness, which is important training for a rising chemical engineer. Therefore, it is imperative to implement project-enhanced learning on a larger scale in chemical engineering education.

Reference:

Zerin N. Project-Enhanced Learning in the Mass and Energy Balances (MEB) Course. Chemical Engineering Education. 2024; 58 (3): 201-204. DOI: 10.18260/2-1-370.660-134209.