(429c) Application of Low-Cost Components to the Chemical Engineering Practices

Since the Bolonia process started in 1999, the focus in education changes from a professor centered process to a student centered process. It took shape in the concept of "capabilities" or some specific skills to be worked during the teaching process at universities. Some of them are creativity, oral communication or autonomous learning. That change in the educational process implies that it is necessary a change during classroom or laboratory activities. Traditionally, laboratory practices in chemical engineering were done by using pre-built equipement calibrated to properly work during laboratory lessons. It was done so because of the complexity and high cost of the chemical equipement used. It would be a nonsense to think that students could assemble and start up a distillation column or a CSTR. Instead of that, students find a totally assembled and perfectly working equipment were they only take some data ignoring the work required and the problems arised during mounting and setting. If we join that with the increasing concern about capabilities like autonomous learning or team working, we concluded that it would be great if we could desing an activity were students desing, build, operate and improve a simple chemical process. One could think that it is an utopy because of the great cost of the components needed. However, in the last years have emerged some low-cost hardware communities that can help us to achieve our aim. Specifically, Arduino (and others like Raspberry Pi) microcontrollers can be bought nowadays for less than $25. They have both analogical and digital inputs and outputs, and can be easily programmed. These features make them right to use in PSE teaching, for example, to test different control algorithms for a specific controller. Besides, not only cheap microcontrollers can be found nowadays, but also a wide amount of cheap sensors and transducers (temperature, pressure, flow...) are commercially available too. All together encouraged us to design a meta-activity were two small size (plate and shell tube) heat exchangers were provided to the student with pumps, valves, deposits, tubing, sensors, microcrontollers and all electronic components required. That operation was chosen mainly because of safety aspects (only water is used at temperatures below 60 ºC). In this work, we present all technical aspects of the meta-activity predesigned as well as the educational tasks employed. We also present students feedback as well as the rubrics employed to measure the capabilities tested.