Education for Chemical Engineers最新文献

Multidisciplinary teams often undertake engineering projects beyond their original discipline involving different kinds of risks. Risk perception is an inherent and embedded part of the decision-making process, which depends on the personal background and instinctive attitudes or behaviors. Process safety and risk analysis training for engineers, and education for engineering students, provide valuable tools seeking safer workplaces; however, personnel’s risk perception is commonly neglected. This paper analyzes the risk perception and appetite of undergraduate engineering students in Colombia based on a survey strategy and a weighted-approach following a Factor Analysis. The survey considered financial, social, physical, and professional risks, and four main reasons for risk-taking or risk-avoiding actions. The Factor Analysis allows us to classify the students tendency as risk-averse o risk-prone, and propose didactic teaching planning using a modular toolbox for process safety education, based on skills identified for junior engineers in Colombian Oil & Gas Industry. A total of 465 engineering students from 12 Colombian universities completed the survey in 2016. The results suggest that risk perception depends on the location, possible risk training, and accessible information. The obtained factors allow describing the students’ overall risk profiles, which can serve as an input for refining the content and curriculum content of current engineering programs regarding process safety. Improving the training of risk management in the engineering curriculum will benefit upcoming multidisciplinary teams in high-risk industries.

Before the pandemic, distance learning was not a widely adopted option for science and engineering programs where in some courses, such as chemistry, electromagnetism, or fluid mechanics, etc., attending to laboratories and workshops was in most cases mandatory. The lockdown forced us to innovate, searching alternative ways to teach experimental phenomena, suddenly replaced with simulation science and technology, subjects that although rely on computers, also suffered changes from the transition. In this contribution, we propose an undergraduate course on simulation for chemical engineering, departing from the fact that modeling, and simulation are multipurpose and multidisciplinary tools. The course aims to reinforce the concepts of dynamical systems by using analogies between process engineering examples and other disciplines, particularly, epidemiology. For this purpose, a final project on modeling the dynamics of the COVID 19 pandemic in Mexico was designed and validated with a public database from the Mexican Secretariat of Health. By doing this, the students got in touch with the evolution of the dynamics outside of school hours, since it was common to see weekly updates and extrapolation trends of the pandemic, thus applying their skills to the final project. It was found that success factors were the use of official data, the use of Graphical User Interfaces to explore diverse simulation scenarios and the final project. The transition to the Distance Learning faced several challenges that were partially coped with the redesign of the course.

Teaching the various contents of signaling in molecular biology to students is challenging. The mechanistic details between the ‘wiring diagram’ of signaling and the cellular outcomes are usually missing in textbooks. Students always feel exhausted when they have to complete the mandatory courses on molecular biology. In current work, MATLAB simulations were introduced to interpret the intrinsically dynamic mechanisms of key signaling pathways. The theoretical basis was first introduced and then two examples related to intrinsic apoptosis and p53 pathway were provided. The high-performance of MATLAB visualization can also help students improve their experiences in learning molecular biology. The strategy of using MATLAB simulations was primarily designed for illustrative purposes and some simply exercises were given for students. The response of students to the questionnaire is generally more positive concerning the suitability of using MATLAB simulations. Most students were interested in the molecular biology courses with modeling contents. We argue that the computational tool may be a useful alternative for engaging students and helps reinforce understanding of signaling pathways.

STEM programs and companies continue to struggle to find and retain talent from underrepresented minorities. This is often due to difficulty retaining these students in university programs, despite similar initial enrollment rates. Students of Hispanic descent are the fastest growing group of students in the United States education system. As more Hispanic students begin to study STEM and more universities become Hispanic-serving institutions, STEM curricula should adapt to better serve this group. In this article, we discuss how prominently including the work of minority scientists and engineers in the classroom can bolster students of color. Next, we re-introduce the work of noted Hispanic scientists Luis Miramontes and Mario Molina and technology from ancient Mesoamerican cultures. Finally, we show how educators can easily use these scientists’ work to increase representation in coursework without drastically changing their lecture notes.

Due to the steadily rising number of students and the simultaneous reduction in practical lessons in study programs, the need for alternative learning resources is increasing. In this work, a method is described which allows real laboratory equipment to be represented as web-based models, using a stirred bioreactor as an example. The bioreactor model that was developed allows students to explore the design and operation of stirred bioreactors independently of time, location and end device. Information associated with each bioreactor component is displayed on the model to help students become familiar with different bioreactor setups. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were embedded to enable students to understand the influence of different stirrers on flow behavior in the bioreactors. This online tool prepares students for subsequent practical work with bioreactors in the laboratory.

In the recent 39 years, China colleges and universities have developed drastically. However, the colleges’ laboratory accidents also rise significantly. This paper analyzed 197 China college accidents. The results show that the highest percentage of safety accidents are hazardous chemicals. Most of the injured parts of the 416 casualties are concentrated in the front upper body. The author finds that there is a certain correlation between the percentage of accidents and the number of students, as well as the number of scientific research activities. Based on the findings, the author points out: firstly, the college safety department should build a laboratory safety information sharing and analysis platform. The dynamic information includes hazardous chemicals, students, dangerous equipment, research experiments, etc. Secondly, China colleges and universities should build a laboratory safety education system with Chinese characteristics, incorporating laboratory safety education into the training of students. Finally, it is urgent to establish a professional team to fully implement the laboratory safety responsibility system; to establish a laboratory hierarchical and classified management system and to improve experiment project risk assessment and control; to carry out a special inspection on laboratory safety; to carry out standardized construction and to establish standardized process management procedures.

High quality personnel (HQP) with interdisciplinary knowledge and skills of chemical engineering, computer science, and automation are urgently needed for intelligent chemical engineering. This study explores how to make chemical engineering students proficient in applying automation and computer knowledge to solve complex problems in industrial productions. An interdisciplinary curriculum for Intelligent Chemical Engineering (ICE) program was developed by a team consisting of professors in automation, chemical engineering and computer applications at Taiyuan University of Technology’s College of Chemical Engineering. This paper present how the interdisciplinary curriculum was implemented to the volunteer groups on trial for two years and the experimental classes of ICE for three years. Project-based learning (PBL) had been proved to be an effective means to implement the curriculum within limited teaching hours. Surveys for current students and graduates showed that the students’ ability of interdisciplinary thinking and dealing with complex problems, the skills to use professional software for digital plant design and smart plant management had been greatly improved.

Hands-on experience in the laboratory is essential in chemical engineering education to enhance the understanding of abstract theories and their effect on chemical processes. In this work, we describe a laboratory class, which combines some of the main engineering concepts into a set of hands-on experiments and simulations. Students are introduced to an iodine clock reaction performed in multiple different reactor types and are instructed to determine the reaction kinetics. Subsequent analysis of the experimental data in Python teaches basic programming skills and the concepts of numeric integration and optimization. Finally, a digital twin of one of the reactors is developed in COMSOL Multiphysics to give the students an application-focused introduction to more-dimensional multiphysics modeling. The students thereby get practical insights into the different methods and stages of reactor and reaction engineering. Based on the students’ assignments, we consistently see a deeper understanding of reaction kinetics and reactor engineering than in the accompanying traditional lecture.

This paper presents the rationale for incorporating engineering design into project-based laboratory learning. To ensure an effective and efficient pedagogy for the new laboratory format, we placed the emphasis of the pedagogical framework on constructivist learning for deep laboratory learning, and integrated experiential learning cycle with cyclic engineering design to formulate a sequential instruction and formative assessment methodology. The implementation of the pedagogy was exemplified using a case study of a concrete distillation design consisting of conceptualizing the design, reasoning the adequacy and experiment-based validation of the design correlations, and verifying the final design as per experimental observations. The impact of the novel lab format on student learning experience was surveyed and compared to that of a traditional laboratory. The survey results revealed that the project-based laboratory with design resulted in an improved learning experience in addressing high-level learning outcomes and engineering skills. Evidence of the survey also suggested that the sequential instruction and formative assessment methodology was effective with every stage of the experiential learning and formative assessment essential for the successful and efficient implementation of the project-based laboratory learning.