(581f) In-Class Smartphone-Enabled Viscometry Experiment Adaptable for Junior-Level Chemical Engineering Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer Courses

Laboratory courses are inherent to the chemical engineering curriculum. In laboratory courses, theoretical concepts are taught and reinforced. In addition, laboratory courses provide opportunities to strengthen professional skills such as teamwork, leadership, communication, experimentation, and data analysis. However, most chemical engineering curricula have laboratory courses in the senior year, while the corresponding theoretical concepts are taught in the sophomore and junior years. This creates an undesirable time lag that might limit the effectiveness of laboratory courses. Additionally, most laboratory courses use conventional experimental setups, which are expensive, lack portability, and require lots of space. Updating these experimental setups with recent technologies can be challenging and costly. Alternatively, laboratory activities can be incorporated into the chemical engineering curriculum before the senior year to better reinforce the students’ professional and technical skills. Therefore, developing and incorporating in-class hands-on experiments adapted with novel, user-friendly, and portable technologies to teach theoretical concepts earlier than the senior year may be an effective way to reinforce professional and technical skills.

In this work, we embedded a classroom-safe viscometry experiment to teach capillary flow theory, rheological analysis from capillary filling dynamics, and heat transfer in junior-level fluid mechanics and heat transfer courses. The viscometry experiment, initially designed for a fluid mechanics course, was adapted for use in the heat transfer course. In both courses, groups were assigned based on their personality preferences. Using smartphones, students recorded the self-driven flow of a tiny sample droplet (< ~60 microliters) in glass capillary tubes of diameters 400 and 800 micrometers. Newtonian (water) and non-Newtonian (xanthan gum) liquids were employed as samples, and their rheology was probed at room temperature for the fluid mechanics course. Meanwhile, Newtonian water-glycerol solutions were examined at various temperatures for the heat transfer course. The smartphone videos were then analyzed using computational tools (MATLAB and EXCEL) to retrieve the capillary flow dynamics and characterize the rheology of the fluid. The findings from this research reinforce the advantages of hands-on and experiential learning in improving how students learn theory and professional skills such as teamwork and data analysis.