(372d) Integrating Sustainability Principles into Chemical Engineering Core Courses: A PBL Approach

Today, there is broad consensus about the urgent need to integrate sustainability principles into chemical engineering curricula. However, attempts to do so raise important questions: (1) how to accommodate these principles in a crowded syllabus or curriculum? and (2) how to design separate courses to teach sustainability with limited resources?

The current work proposes the implementation of a project-based learning (PBL) approach to integrate sustainability principles into chemical engineering core courses at The Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico (PUPR). Currently, this approach is being piloted in two courses: chemical engineering thermodynamics and mass transfer operations, which are taken by the students during their junior year.

In the thermodynamics class project, each team is tasked with the design of an absorption refrigeration system to recover wasted heat from a specific process. To achieve the project objectives, the students are asked to use energy and mass balances, in addition to some thermodynamics concepts such as coefficient of performance (COP), isentropic efficiency, and the first and second laws.

For the mass transfer operations class project, each team is asked to design three different absorbers (single unit, multi-stage and packed column) to recover SO₂ from an industrial flue gas to subsequently convert it into a value-added product. As part of the project, the students apply core concepts such as the operation and pseudo-equilibrium lines, and the fractional approach to flooding.

In both projects, the students must consider the following aspects: (1) sustainability principles, (2) the existing environmental regulations and (3) the social and economic impact of the proposed design.

Typical summative assessment methods are used to evaluate the impacts of these PBL activities on the student learning outcomes. In addition, the student’s perception of learning is assessed with the Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG). Also, student self-efficacy is evaluated using the 8-item self-efficacy subscale from the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ).

This pilot study provides valuable information to the academic community, in terms of how to design and develop activities to expose chemical engineering students to sustainability issues while learning specific principles of the field.