Process Intensification Approach in Learning, Teaching and Assessment: Course Design and Content Delivery

Sustainable industrial growth is globally recognised as one of the current challenges of our time. Outcome-based quality education could be one of the solutions to overcoming this challenge. Process intensification (PI) is described as a design approach that can substantially lead to shrinking process equipment size, energy saving, costs reduction, increased safety, and reduced environmental impact. It could also be useful in designing a chemical engineering (ChE) course. The application of best PI practices is based on four principles: maximizing effectiveness of intra & inter molecular events; giving each molecule same processing experience; optimizing the driving forces/resistances at every scale and maximizing the specific surface areas to which these forces /resistances apply; and maximizing the synergistic effect from partial processes. Furthermore, enhanced specific surface area can be realised via structuring the equipment or material used for the process. Moreover, PI can be achieved through the functional, spatial, thermodynamics and temporal domains. Each of these domains has its own peculiarity. For example, in the spatial domain, emphasis is laid on the need to avoid randomness in process equipment. For this reason, it is highly recommended to replace randomness in process equipment with structured ones. Random character at any scale can reduce the efficiency, cause safety problems, reduce process predictability and ability to control process behaviour. One of the major causes of randomness in process equipment or material is the manufacturing technique used for its production. Thus, the intended excellence in chemical engineering education can be achieved by following a systematically structured approach in the course design, content delivery and constructive alignment of the delivered content with the assessment given to students. This work examines how some of the concepts of PI could be applied to develop an effective outcome-based ChE education. It will also provide a case study of the application of PI using a core ChE course, and highlight the challenges involved in adopting this approach.