Chemical Engineering 475

Unit Operations Laboratory I

Fall 2005

Instructors: Michael Beliveau; 223 CB; 422-3921;

Neil Giles;350T CB; (Section 1)

Randy Lewis; 350S CB; 422-7863; (Section 2)

Class Place and Time: Rm 217 CB,

TuTh 1:00-3:50 pm (Section 1)

MW 2:00-4:50 pm (Section 2)

Teaching Assistants: Leslie Pagel; (Section 1)

Greg Gessel; (Section 2)

Objectives: The overall goal is to teach students to think and communicate as engineers. Educationally, the following competencies are identified as objectives of this course:

1.Students will gain hands on experience with chemical processes, units, and corresponding equipment through lab experiments.

2.Students will demonstrate an understanding of basic engineering statistics in their laboratory reports.

3.Students will understand and be able to describe the physical significance of key dimensionless quantities including Re and f.

4.Students will understand qualitatively conduction, forced and free convection, and radiation and have experience with one or more modes during experiments.

5.Students will be able to analyze systems containing multiple resistances to heat transfer during laboratory experiments.

6.Students will understand convective heat transfer and be able to use heat transfer coefficients as they relate to the UO Laboratory experiments.

7.Students will demonstrate familiarity and experience with the measurement of process variables (e.g., P, T, flow rate, conc.).

8.Students will demonstrate knowledge of basic laboratory techniques.

9.Students will be able to use the scientific method and problem solving strategies, as well as statistical methods, to design and carry out experiments in order to solve engineering problems.

10.Students will demonstrate familiarity and experience with the application of process control principles on an industrial control system.

11.Students will demonstrate familiarity and experience with chemical process equipment.

12.Students will demonstrate an ability to solve engineering problems.

13.Students will be able to integrate topics from various chemical engineering courses to solve realistic problems during lab experiments.

14.Students will exhibit critical and creative thinking skills for analysis and evaluation of problems and cause-effect relationships.

15.Students will be able to obtain and evaluate appropriate input information/data from databases, handbooks, correlations, experiments, literature, etc.

16.Students will be able to rationalize units, make order of magnitude estimates, assess reasonableness of solutions, and select appropriate levels of solution sophistication.

17.Students will understand and practice safe laboratory and chemicals-handling principles.

18.Students will be able to give effective, well-organized oral presentations including the handling of questions and the use of appropriate visual aids.

19.Students will be able to write effective, well-organized technical reports, including formal engineering reports and short letter reports.

20.Students will demonstrate effective reading of technical material.

21.Students will demonstrate effective interpretation of graphical data.

22.Students will practice good teamwork principles.

23.Students will demonstrate experience working together in teams.

24.Students will be able to do preliminary size and performance calculations on shell-and-tube heat exchangers from experimental data.

25.Students will be able to calculate and use overall heat transfer coefficients in designing heat exchangers.

26.Students will understand practical considerations of heat exchangers including types of heat exchangers, materials of construction, and fouling.

27.Students will be able to design flow systems involving pipes, valves, fittings, and pumps for Newtonian fluids.

Professional Environment

To the extent possible, the professional engineering environment will be simulated. You will be grouped into teams of 2 or 3 people (a different team for each project) and will be given projects in the form of memos from your supervisor (instructor). The projects will intentionally be open-ended, and your team will respond to each project by conducting experiments, performing analyses, drawing conclusions, and making recommendations. Each member of the team will submit his/her own report as if he/she was the team leader submitting the only report about the work. In addition, as a professional, you will be required to maintain professional standards of attendance, teamwork, and safety practices throughout the semester.

Attendance: In keeping with the goal of simulating the professional environment, you must be in attendance (“at work”) for the entire lab period on each day of the lab. For emergencies or other pressing circumstances, please communicate with Mr. Beliveau, Dr. Giles, or Dr. Lewis, just as you would with an employer. All the experimental work will be done in class, and you should also try to do as much data analysis and report writing in class as possible.

Teamwork: You will be assigned to a different 2- or 3-member team for each project. It is expected that you will work cooperatively, sharing a fair portion of the work-load. At the conclusion of each project, the other members of your team will be required to evaluate how well you performed as a team member.

Safety: The following safety precautions are required by all (these are not optional):

1.No food is allowed in the laboratory or in the computer area.

2.All personnel in the laboratory area are required to wear safety glasses, long pants, and covered shoes (no sandals).

3.All students are required to complete ChEn 311; this course includes the HAZCOM training course.

4.Experimental work should be done during the regular class periods. If additional time is needed in the laboratory, you must clear it with Dr. Giles or Dr. Lewis and make an appointment for the use of the laboratory with Mr. Beliveau. At least two partners must be present during those additional hours (no one is permitted to work in the lab alone).

Resources

Written Materials: No official text is used for this course, but printed handouts will be provided. In addition, some textbooks and engineering handbooks are kept in the laboratory bookcase for your use, but please do not remove them from the room, and please return them to the bookcase at the end of each period. A significant amount of information is also available on the course website at Of course, your textbooks from previous courses will also be helpful.

Hardware: Instruments, supplies, manuals, etc., may be checked out from the Laboratory Supervisor, Mr. Michael Beliveau, or from the T.A. All materials checked out during the laboratory must be returned to the stockroom at the end of the laboratory period.

Lectures: Brief lectures will be given in 217 CB in order to provide guidance about report writing, data analysis, etc. We hope that these will be helpful, and we welcome your feedback on these lectures, as well as suggestions for additional topics.

Project Requirements: Three projects will be given during the semester. The following must be completed for each project:

Requirement / Who? / Details
Permission to Start / Team / Submit at the beginning of the second lab period. You must review the form with an Instructor or TA prior to starting any experiments.
Preplan Report / Team / Submit at the beginning of the second lab period. The Preplan should be a minimum of two pages but should be of sufficient length to include the following:
  1. The problem to be solved or decision to be made
  2. Theoretical analysis (equations, assumptions, etc.) associated with the problem
  3. Experimental procedures including experimental design (values of operating variables, number of replicates, etc.), measurements that will be made (which parameters, how often, etc.), system issues (warm-up times, assuring steady-state, etc.), and safety issues
  4. Data analysis (including a sample calculation!!)
  5. Method(s) for establishing credibility of your data

Progress Report / Team / Submit approximately half-way through the project. The progress report (excluding figures and tables) should be a minimum of two pages but should be of sufficient length to include the following:
  1. Changes in the Preplan and the reasons for the changes
  2. Summarized experimental data with appropriate figures and/or tables.
  3. Preliminary data analysis
  4. Preliminary conclusions

Final Written Report / Individual / Submit a 7-10 page report for the first two projects. You are required to maintain your own record of the experiment in a separate laboratory notebook and to write your own report. Thinking and analysis may be shared by the entire team, but your contribution must be a major part of the project and certainly a major part of your report, for which you will assume total responsibility. Figures and tables may not be copied from your partner. Excerpts from the Preplan and Progress Report may be used but they must be referenced. Submission of written project reports will be required at the beginning of the lab period according to the attached schedule. Reports turned in late without prior approval from Mr. Beliveau, Dr. Giles, or Dr. Lewis will be penalized, and missing class to finish a late report will add to the penalty. Please work ahead to ensure that your report is finished on time.
Final Oral Report / Team / Present an oral report for the third project. The oral report should be approximately 20 minutes with 5 minutes for questions. The oral report content should be similar to the content of the written reports. The oral presentation should be evenly distributed among the team members. The team must provide a copy of the data and data analysis on the day of the oral report.
Notebook / Individual / Submit an individual notebook. As is standard professional practice, all pertinent details of each project must be recorded in ink in your individual project notebook (one for each student), which should be a bound notebook (spiral notebooks are not acceptable) with pre-printed page numbers. Completeness and neatness of the project notebook will be a part of your grade. If questions arise about the accuracy and validity of the data in your reports, it should be possible to answer those questions by referring to the project notebook. Recorded details should include but not be limited to the following:
  1. dates and times when experimental work was performed
  2. names of team members performing the experimental work (all team members must sign each notebook at the end of each day’s entry)
  3. specifications of all equipment used, instrument calibrations
  4. all raw data taken by hand
  5. data calculations and error analysis
  6. summaries of final data
  7. photocopies of key graphs, equipment specifications, draft tables and graphs, etc. taped into the notebook

Additional Assignments

LabView. LabView instruction will be provided in class during the first two lab periods. An in-class assignment will be given during the second lab period.

Statistics. A statistics assignment will be due at the beginning of the lab period following the statistics instruction.

Grading

The LabView and Statistics Assignments are 15 points each. The possible points for each project are shown below:

Project #1 / Project #2 / Project #3
Preplan / 20 / 20 / 20
Introduction write-up / 15
Methods/procedures write-up / 15
Theoretical/Analytical write-up / 15
Progress Report / 20 / 20 / 20
Final Report (written or oral) / 100 / 100 / 100
Notebook / 20 / 20 / 20
Evaluation by team/instructor / 15 / 15 / 15
TOTAL / 220 / 175 / 175

There is a total of 600 points. Student achieving the following points are guaranteed the following grades.The instructors reserve the right to lower the points corresponding to the letter grades depending on natural breaks in the course grade distribution and their perception of overall class performance.

A 565-600 points / B+ 520-539 points / C+ 460-479 points / D 360-419 points
A- 540-564 points / B 500-519 points / C 440-459 points / F < 360 points
B- 480-499 points / C- 420-439 points

Honesty.

The honor code at BYU must be followed at all times. As previously stated, you must do your own work for the individual assignments. You may discuss data reduction, experimental results, etc. but you must write your own report and prepare your own graphs and figures. Plagiarism is not tolerated in any profession, including chemical engineering. Plagiarism includes copying your partners work or copying reference material without proper references. If you need to include information in your report that is not your own, you should paraphrase the information and provide a reference. Academic dishonesty will result in a grade of F for the course.