(376d) Modeling Drug Delivery Using Sodium Alginate Beads and Food Coloring As an Intro to Chemical Engineering Experiment for First-Year Students

At the University of Kansas (KU), engineering students declare their major prior to the start of school. In their first year, students take an Intro to Engineering course in their respective discipline to learn more about the major and to decide if they want to further pursue their chosen major or switch. At KU, the Introduction to Chemical Engineering course is two one-credit courses that meet weekly for 50 minutes and students complete four two-hour lab experiments each semester. The topics cover a wide range of fields where chemical engineering is applied.

One experiment that was piloted in the second part of the sequence was a drug delivery experiment where students worked in groups and made sodium alginate beads that encapsulate food coloring. The food coloring is used a visual, representative drug. Prior to lab, students were given a procedure on how to make the beads and tasked with selecting and testing the effects of one variable on food coloring release for one hour. A spectrophotometer was used to quantify the amount of food coloring released. As students waited for the food coloring to be released, they developed their own calibration curve to relate concentration with absorbance.

Students gained experience designing an experiment, learned about the theory and calculations related to spectrophotometry, created their own calibration curve, and practiced performing dilutions and pipetting. This talk will focus on the format of the experiment, the learning objectives and showcase some results students obtained.