BEng Chemical Engineering

Study years & industrial placement

Year 1: Approx. Sept 2006 — Jul 2007
Year 2: Approx. Sept 2007 — Jul 2008
DIS placement year: 15 Sept 2008 — Oct 2009
Year 3: Approx. Oct 2009 — Jul 2010

Approximate study-stage dates; DIS denotes the Diploma in Industrial Studies.

Core subjects & competencies

Thermodynamics & phase behaviour

Energy balances, enthalpy, entropy and chemical equilibrium; using ideal and non-ideal fluid behaviour to understand phase change and separation. Thermodynamics and Chemical Engineering Fundamentals underpin calculations of heat duties, fluid properties and vapour–liquid equilibrium.

Fluid dynamics & transport processes

Conservation of mass and momentum, laminar and turbulent flow, pressure losses and pumping requirements. Transport Processes and Transfer Processes connect fluid behaviour with heat and mass transfer, including conduction, convection, radiation and equipment sizing.

Process control & instrumentation

Measurement of pressure, temperature, flow and level; how sensors, controllers and control valves form a feedback loop. Instrumentation & Control and Chemical Process Control develop the quantitative analysis of time-dependent response, control performance and stability.

Process balances, modelling & simulation

Material and energy balances across mixing, reaction and separation systems, including recycle streams. Mathematical Methods, Process Balances and Process Systems Engineering provide the equations and numerical methods for modelling equipment and solving integrated process flowsheets.

Separations & particle technology

Phase equilibrium, diffusion and interphase mass transfer applied to distillation, absorption and extraction. Mass Transfer and Separations and Particle Technology cover the calculation of separation requirements and the behaviour and processing of particles, suspensions and emulsions.

Reaction, biochemical & food engineering

Reaction rates, conversion and reactor balances, progressing from batch operation to continuous reactor systems. Reaction Engineering, Chemical & Biochemical Processes and Food Engineering connect kinetics with mixing, thermal processing, sterilisation and biological production.

Plant design, safety & economics

Equipment selection and sizing, engineering drawings, hazard assessment and the relationship between capital cost, operating cost and process performance. Plant Engineering, Safety, Loss Prevention & Environmental Control, Pollution Control and Process Economics & Design Optimisation bring practical constraints into design decisions.

Research & technical communication

Experimental planning, data analysis, literature evaluation and technical reporting through laboratory applications, the Research & Development Project, Dissertation and Technical Communications. The design projects combined these skills with individual responsibility and collaborative engineering.

Research & design projects

Microfluidics research

In a two-person R&D project, we constructed and tested a glass co-flow microcapillary device to investigate sunflower-oil droplet formation. The experimental nozzle had a 44 μm internal diameter, producing droplets of approximately 572–813 μm.

Using syringe pumps, microscopy and high-speed imaging, we investigated how the two fluid flow rates affected droplet size and formation time. We compared measured formation times with a mass-balance model and found that continuous-phase flow had the stronger influence on droplet diameter.

Recognition: Department Project Prize, 2009/10, for the microfluidics R&D project.

Team design — bioethanol from sugar beet

As part of a five-person team, I contributed to a conceptual plant design spanning sugar extraction and purification, hydrolysis, fermentation, distillation, dehydration and wastewater treatment.

The design included heat-integrated distillation at 3.8 bar and atmospheric pressure. Our report brought together process selection, mass and energy balances, flowsheets, P&IDs, plant layout, operating procedures, HAZOP and an economic assessment.

Individual design — batch fermentation

I developed the detailed design of the batch fermenter and its ancillary equipment: vessels, agitation, heating and cooling, feed systems and instrumentation. The design specified eight fermenters in two trains, with fermentation at 32°C, approximately pH 4.5, over an 80-hour batch.

The work included fermentation kinetics, mass and energy balances, heat-exchanger sizing, mechanical and process drawings, a control philosophy, start-up and shutdown procedures, a steam-line HAZOP, and capital and operating cost estimates.

Industrial placement

My placement at Technical Simulation Consultants, September 2008–approximately October 2009, applied this foundation to natural-gas treatment, separation, compression and process-control simulations. The TSC7 generic simulation redevelopment was the start of my product creation and management journey and led into the simulation engineering career described on my CV.

For wider subject context, see Loughborough University’s Chemical Engineering course.