(162e) Welcome to Che: Chocolate Engineering

An Introduction to Chemical Engineering course must introduce the student to the language of chemical processes as he learns of the many career options. This must be accomplished in a way that is meaningful to a student with minimal technical background and motivating enough to encourage them to return for another semester. The authors have found that food and fun are excellent motivators with chocolate being a distinct favorite.

The freshmen at The University of Tulsa learn about chocolate processing and have the opportunity to sample along the way. Groups of students can roast cocoa beans, break the beans apart and separate the edible portion from the husks, grind the beans, separate the cocoa butter from the solids, and attempt to make edible chocolate. Each step presents unique challenges to the students which encourages them to brainstorm ways to automate and scale up the process. The lessons learned during the freshman year are continued as the sophomores are introduced to mass and energy balances. There the emphasis is on the final products: chocolate covered cookies and chocolate covered coffee beans.

The students have an opportunity to demonstrate the lessons learned at the annual e-week Open House for middle school students. University students discuss the food processing steps and relate them to chemical engineering processes. Samples of the cocoa beans at different stages of processing are available to see and smell. The middle school students learn about the product specifications for white, milk and dark chocolate then choose a kind to sample. This activity combines the fun with the familiar as a useful reinforcement for the university students and an introduction of younger students to a career they might have never before considered.