Undergraduate Course: Chemical Engineering Design 2 (CHEE08022)
Course Outline
| School | School of Engineering |
College | College of Science and Engineering |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 8 (Year 2 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | The aims of this course are:
- To teach basic principles of chemical engineering design, namely knowledge of the fundamentals of: diagrammatic representations of chemical processes; mass and energy balances; reactor selection and design, and developing the soft skills needed to use this knowledge as part of open-ended design;
- To give students an awareness of the wider context of chemical engineering design: embedding ethics; environmental and sustainability considerations; and process safety;
- To further train and develop students in the fundamentals of chemical engineering practice and to develop their autonomy through: group work; communication by various means; open-ended problem solving; putting theory into practice; familiarity with basic principles of design software.
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| Course description |
Taught fundamental knowledge and skills:
Semester 1:
- Basics of block and process flow diagrams to represent processes, including familiarity with basic symbols e.g. for pumps, and introducing the idea of standard ways of doing things;
- Understanding the purpose of, and calculation of, stream tables;
- Steady-state mass and energy balances with and without reactions; familiarity with handling mass and molar quantities; treating unit operations as black boxes; inclusion of recycle and purge streams in mass balances.
- Basic descriptions of fundamental reactor types and the principles of reactor selection, design and sizing for batch and continuous processing;
- Applying knowledge of mass and energy balances and rate equations to reactor design, leading to determining the reactor size and conditions required to achieve a certain conversion for a given reaction kinetics.
Semester 2:
- Awareness of process safety including (i) the definitions of risks and hazards and construction of risk matrices; (ii) identifying hazards; (iii) principles of loss prevention; (iv) inherently safe design (v) qualitative risk assessment; and (vi) the study of a historical chemical engineering accident (reflecting on factors including human error).
- Basic use of commercial software for solving chemical engineering problems, e.g. (i) verifying that a given simple UniSim model satisfies mass and energy balances; (ii) manipulating pre-made UniSim models to identify bottlenecks.
Wider principles to be embedded throughout:
- Development of professional skills:
- Identifying design objectives;
- Open-ended problem solving;
- Working with constraints and justifying decisions;
- Evaluation of outcomes of the design;
- Group work and time management;
- Communicating by various means;
- Process safety, ethics, principles of sustainability;
- Systems thinking - understanding the interdependence of elements of complex systems.
The course also includes Works Visits to local chemical engineering sites, giving students exposure to real world processes.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Full Year |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 20,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 17,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 6,
External Visit Hours 10,
Feedback/Feedforward Hours 18,
Formative Assessment Hours 1,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
124 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Coursework %: 100 |
| Feedback |
There are regularly scheduled feedback sessions aligned with each of the assignments, see delivery plan. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Communicate the outcomes of a design using block and basic process flow diagrams, and using stream tables;
- Perform steady-state mass and energy balances with and without reaction, utilising the concept of rate or extent of reaction, and incorporating recycle and purge streams;
- Describe the basic reactor types (CSTR, plug flow and batch) and be able to determine reactor size and conditions to achieve a certain conversion for a given simple kinetics;
- Assess issues of process safety, ethics, sustainability and environmental considerations as part of the design process;
- Complete open-ended design problems individually and as part of a team, evaluate the outcomes, and communicate your results by a variety of means (verbally, written, diagrammatically);
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Reading List
- Felder & Rousseau, Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes
- Coulson and Richardson, Volume 6, Chemical Engineering Design
- Ian S. Metcalfe, Chemical Reaction Engineering
- H. Scott Fogler, Elements of Chemical Reaction Engineering
- Octave Levenspiel, Chemical Reaction Engineering
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Chemical,Engineering,Design |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Chris Ness
Tel:
Email: Chris.Ness@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Mark Owenson
Tel: (0131 6)50 5533
Email: Mark.Owenson@ed.ac.uk |
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