Continuous improvements in third year chemical engineering design

An impending retirement has led us to reevaluate the course: should we keep it - and if so who teaches it, or should we look to change it? The course was co-taught with a new faculty member, coupled with internal reviews and discussions. Ultimately, we decided to keep the course, and also to work to broaden its base. Historically, the design problems have been petrochemical in nature. Each team gets a reaction, with a first order rate law, as well as a production rate and fractional conversion. From this, they do the design calculations for a reactor and separator, and also generate the base engineering drawings. This past year, the project types were expanded to include environmental remediation and hydrometallurgical extraction. The environmental remediation problems involved wastewater processing (eg., BOD oxidation) which can be treated as a first order reaction. The hydrometallurgical problem (Li leaching from spodumene) also was set up as first order. Additionally, we provided the option of a case study review. The students chose a classic chemical safety incident, reviewed the details, and created a summary report which included recommendations on how to incorporate learnings from the incident into the curriculum.Both authors would like to acknowledge receipt of a TEAL Fellowship from the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, University of Toronto