The fundamentals of process variables, material balances, energy balances, and entropy balances will be introduced. Phase and reaction equilibria will be presented. Application to power cycles and chemical reactor design will be made.
The goals of an engineering education should be: to supply you with a fundamental set of concepts and practices upon which engineering is built, and with which you can build an intellectual framework for the additional knowledge which you will undoubtedly need, to help you distinguish between what you know and what you don't know, to give you practice in educating yourself with whatever knowledge is necessary to solve the problem at hand, and to communicate clearly to others what the problem is and how to solve it.
This course is designed to teach you the fundamentals of chemical and thermal processes, to help you distinguish between what you know and what you don't know, to give you practice in educating yourself with whatever knowledge is necessary to solve the problem at hand, and to communicate clearly to others what the problem is and how to solve it. Toward this end, there are the following course components:
The homework will usually be assigned by email to the class list and also listed on the website. Homework will not be submitted for grading (with one exception). However, students will be chosen pseudo-randomly to present homework solutions for each problem in class. In addition to the solution, the presenting student will be expected to describe the fundamental principles needed to solve the problem, and how the problem applies in a larger engineering context.
Each presentation will be graded for technical content (by me), and for utility and clarity of presentation (by the other students). Students will not be given advance notice of the day they are to present. If you are not present on the day you are asked to present, you will receive a zero, unless you have informed me ahead of time (e.g., clinic or other trip), or your absence is due to a serious documentable cause (e.g., illness, earthquake, family tragedy). Students will be emailed their presentation grades as soon as they are available.
To be successful in this class, you must start on your homework early. There are often missing parameters or approaches that are not in the book, nor in the class notes. You are expected to find the missing material. You can often find it by asking me in person or by email, but you won't know what to ask until you start on the homework. People who wait until the night before will almost certainly be unable to finish.
There will be a computer assignment due each week. For the first twelve weeks, the assignments will be on Microsoft Excel and will be submitted electronically. There will be templates for each of the spreadsheet assignments available on the course website. For the last three weeks, the assignments will probably be on a commercial process flow simulator, and will probably be turned in as annotated printouts.
Pop quizzes may be given at any time during class. They will be short (5-to-10 minutes) and on a single concept or idea.
Three mid-term examinations and one final examination will be given. They will be open-book and open-note. The exams will consist of two sections: A series of short, single-topic questions, and several deeper questions. The short-question section must be completed during the assigned testing period, but the deeper-question section may be completed anytime during a 24-hour period commencing with the start of the short-question period.
The purpose of the short-question section is to test for a minimal competency in chemical and thermal processes. A list of exactly what concept or principle is being tested by each short question will be provided before the exam. Except for plugging in the numerical values, you can (and should) prepare complete solutions for the short questions before the exam. You must pass 70 percent of the short questions on each exam to pass the course. A student passing fewer than 70 percent of the questions on a given exam will have one week from the time the exams are returned to schedule and pass an oral examination on the same subjects, if they wish to remain in the class. Anyone failing an oral examination will fail the course.
The deeper questions are designed to test for the ability to integrate and synthesize several basic skills in the solution of an engineering problem. Exam problems from previous years will be included in the homework. There will be no extra review sessions scheduled outside of class before the exams.
The weighting of assessed material will be as follows:
| HW/Presentations | 25% |
| Computer Assignments | 20% |
| Quizzes | 5% |
| Midterms | 30% |
| Final | 20% |