(215b) Capstone Education for the Next Generation of Chemical Engineers

Vincent G. Grassi, Air Products

Cesar A. Silebi, Lehigh University

Abstract Submitted to

Distillations Honors Session: William Luyben

Area 2a: Distillation and Adsorption of the Separations Division

2011 Annual AIChE Meeting

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Professor Luyben has been teaching and practicing chemical engineering for five decades.  During this time he has published more than 200 technical papers, 12 textbooks, consulted to industry, and presented at numerous technical forums.  The authors can attest from both an industrial and academic perspective that Bill’s unique skill is that he can write, lecture, and debate advanced concepts in process design, process control in a way that others can quickly gasp the concepts and apply them in new ways to advanced the state of the technology in chemical process design and operation.  His developments in distillation, and plantwide control have created millions of dollars of benefits in many international chemical companies, such as ExxxonMobil, DuPont, Air Products, and Eastman Chemical to name a few.

This presentation will highlight the key features of Bill’s most recent work in the implementation of Lehigh University’s capstone chemical process design course.  The course not only covers plant design but also a unique approach that teaches undergraduates how to design practical plantwide process control schemes.  The two semesters capstone course teaches senior chemical engineering students how to apply the fundamentals of conceptual process design, engineering economics, optimization, process safety, and plantwide dynamic controllability.  By working in teams of 2 to 3 the students develop broader skills in collaborative teamwork, human factors design, presentation, client interaction, and industry acumen. The students apply the fundamentals they have learned throughout their previous academic education to real chemical processes that are proposed by practicing engineers from industry.  The students demonstrate the effectiveness of their designs by using the Aspen Plus and Aspen Dynamics process simulators.  The first semester is dedicated to traditional steady-state design and the economic tradeoff decisions in design.  The second semester is dedicated to plant dynamics and plantwide controllability.  During the second semester the students learn what additional tradeoffs they must make to their original steady-state design such that the plant has good economic and safe plantwide controllability.

This approach prepares graduating chemical engineers with the critical process systems thinking skills needed today.  They learn how to integrate all concepts of chemical engineering from their previous course work.  They obtain real hands-on experience by using state of the practice methods and tools.  All of this improves their ability to solve the critical engineering problems facing our global society today.