INNOVATION IN GREEN PROCESS ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATE LABORATORY COURSE - INTEGRATED LABORATORIES FOR PARTICULATE OPERATIONS, HEAT TRANSFER AND MASS TRANSFER COURSES

In the past two years since 2011, the course instructor (Dr. Xu), along with the students in the Green Process Engineering (GPE) class and TAs, has developed an innovative undergraduate laboratory course that integrates laboratories for particulate operations, heat and mass transfer courses. The integrated lab course runs as research projects that apply and integrate the concepts reviewed in the above courses. One of the key objectives of this course is to train team work and leadership. To this end, the students are grouped into 4 groups, and each group carries out one of the following 4 projects for 6h/week and approx.6 weeks, rotates the projects and completes all by the end of this full-year course: (1) Particulate operations - heterogeneous catalyst particles (Au/MgAl2O4) formation, handling and characterization; (2) Convective heat transfer enhancement in a stirred tank reactor; (3) Liquid phase mass transfer in a gas-liquid stirred reactor system; (4) A green process for the production of acetic acid via aqueous phase oxidation of ethanol with air using Au/MgAl2O4 catalyst: effects of mass transfer and reaction kinetics. As the course learning objectives, students should be able to propose experimental methodologies and design their own experimental procedure, secure and prepare their own experimental materials and equipment and facilities, perform the experiments and collect data, interpret the experimental results using the principles and knowledge from the relevant courses, and present their results effectively.

Solution of Similarity Transformation Equations for Boundary Layers Using Spreadsheets

A spreadsheet based solution of the similarity transformation equations of laminar boundary layer equations is presented. In this approach the nonlinear third order differential equations, for both the hydrodynamic and the thermal boundary layer equations, are discretesized using a simple finite difference approach which is suitable for programming spreadsheet cells. This approach was implemented to solve the similarity transform equations for a flat plate (Blasius equations). The thermal boundary layer result was used to obtain the heat transfer correlation for laminar flow over a flat plate in the form of Nu = Nu(Pr,Re). The relative difference between results of the present approach and those of published data are less than 1%. This approach can be easily covered in the undergraduate. Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer courses. Also, it can be incorporated in graduate Viscous Fluid Mechanics and Convection Heat Transfer courses. Application of the present approach is not limited to the flat plat boundary layer analysis. It can be used for the solution of a number of similarity transformation equations, including wedge flow problem and natural convection problems that are covered in graduate level courses.