(622d) Design Appraisal and Design Projects— What Would You Like to Design?

The final year design project represents, in most Chemical Engineering programmes, the point of convergence of all prior knowledge and skills acquired during earlier years and the culmination of the degree.  As such Design Project is an essential part of any chemical engineering curriculum.  Typically during the final year Design project, or Capstone design project, students work in teams on the design of a process or product over one semester mixing elements of group and individual work.  Although there are a differences from university to university, the most common approach taken is generally based on providing the students with a brief that contains the key elements or constrains associated to the design problem.   Plant capacity, location, product specification, raw material specifications, process or production route are some of the elements that might be typically contained in the general brief.  Based in this brief and without having any input on the product or process selection students proceed over the semester to arduously work on the design of a process or product completing an incredible amount of work over a short period of time.  

In some universities the initial part of the design project is to carry out a feasibility study of the process but in most cases this is not considered.  Similarly, the most common way of delivering the Design project course is using the same project for the entire cohort and in cases introducing variations (e.g. location, plant capacity, product specifications) from team to team.  

One of the requirements for IChemE accreditation in the UK is the need to demonstrate Advance Design and Design practice within the curriculum considering complex and open-ended tasks.  Also, the development of critical thinking and problem solving are key skills considered for accreditation.

In 2010 a review of the Design project at Manchester called for some action to be taken in terms of the type of Design problems used, the focus of the project and the support in place prior to the Design Project itself.  Based on this review few changes were made through the introduction of more variety of open-ended design problems and a different approach to supervision and support.  Consequently, a new course, Synthesis and Design, was introduced in semester 1 to support design teaching and supervisors were paired up so that each pair will support 4 groups of students working in the same product.   A selection of different products are then used for the project.  However, maybe the two more radical changes were the introduction of a new project as part of the Synthesis and Design course, the Design Appraisal Project, and the lack of any design brief for either the Design Appraisal project or the Design Project.  Students start the Design Appraisal project as a white paper.

Since its introduction the Design Appraisal Project has been delivered as part of the Synthesis and Design course, the semester before the Design Project, and constitutes the precursor of the Design Project.  The Design Appraisal Project is an open-ended project that focuses on assessing the feasibility of the production of a given product.  Students are asked to produce a Design Project Brief  as the outcome of the project.  This brief will allow them to carry out a Design Project on the same topic the following semester.

In 2010 students were given the task of assessing the feasibility of production of a given product among six different products pre-selected by the staff.  From 2011 onwards, students have been asked to propose products that were interesting to them.  Each team presents a Product Business Case Proposal to be considered by the Design teaching staff for further development.  A selection of these proposals is then used to allocate products to teams.

This paper discusses the changes and approach introduced since 2010 to Design in the third year curriculum at Manchester.  Positive outcomes, advantages, logistics and potential issues regarding the implementation of this approach will be presented from the perspe