(173b) Modular Teaching and Open Ended Design Projects

Some latest employment surveys show that chemical engineers are working in more and more diverse industries. For example, some of them design and manufacture specialty products, and need to understand property-structure relationships using chemistry, biology, and physics. Therefore, modular teaching with open ended product and process design projects should be integrated into the capstone design course. Modular teaching can provide a means of responding to diverse and fast changing course contents and learning/teaching objectives. Product design projects come in various categories, such as separations, heat and mass transfer, kinetics, thermodynamics, or biotechnology, and incorporate DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) approach to achieve the goal of six sigma methodology. Design teams are responsible from conception to manufacturing by considering green engineering aspects in one semester. This study presents the experience on modular teaching integrated with the Aspen Plus simulator. It also discusses open ended specialty product design projects and open ended plant design projects in the Department of Chemical Engineering at University of Nebraska Lincoln. One of the projects discussed is the renewable energy storage system based on the conversion of available carbon dioxide and hydrogen into methanol or/and urea. The hydrogen comes from electrolysis of water using the electricity produced by wind power.