(462g) Choose Your Own Kinetics Adventure: Student-Designed Case Studies for Chemical Reactor Design Projects

This work presents an innovative approach for a chemical reaction engineering course project. The project tasks students to conduct the preliminary design of a reactor or series of reactors to produce a chemical product of their choice. The constraints on this open-ended "choose your own project" are that the chosen process must involve a catalyst, multiple reactions, and heat transfer. The students must use published kinetics and physical property data from the literature, heat and mass balances, and software to complete their design. Students work in groups and write a report summarizing their findings. The activity connects course concepts to real world applications and requires students to design their own case studies through exploring the research and patent literature. These aspects engage students in topics they are interested in while simultaneously relieving the burden off of faculty for constructing new projects each course offering. This project has been employed successfully in six offerings of Chemical Reaction Engineering at Oklahoma State University, including during Spring 2020. Only minor modifications were needed to adapt this project for use in the online course format. This type of project in a junior level course prepares students for the senior capstone design experience the following year.