(659j) Application of Open Source Software Tools in the Process Safety Education

Process safety professionals have used, developed, and contributed to open source software tools. They have fascinated more and more notice from the society. The free software will enhance the collaboration and motivate the scientific and technical development. The software users can use and even modify the software modules. A lot of applications can be found in the real industrial practice so the engineering learning process should follow this trend. Before starting the career, the students should get to know how to take the full advantage of these tools in their future jobs because the future engineers should know how to find the free software packages in order to solve process safety problems. This presentation will tell the audience how to integrate the open source software into process safety education or learning practice. The examples of modeling projects which can be practiced by the students in the classroom will also be introduced. The modeling will give the students more opportunities to recall their knowledge of mass and energy balance, thermodynamics, heat transfer, reaction kinetics, transport phenomena, process safety, statistics and numerical methods. These projects will also help them to learn how to conduct the risk assessment and process safety management through different kinds of model development. These chemical engineering education activities will allow them to explore computer aided tools such as computing and process simulators throughout the curriculum.