How We Teach: Kinetics and Reactor Design

Paper ID #33380

How We Teach: Kinetics and Reactor Design

Dr. Laura P. Ford, The University of Tulsa

Laura P. Ford is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Tulsa. She teaches engineering science thermodynamics and fluid mechanics, mass transfer, and chemical engineering senior labs. She is the advisor for TU's student chapter of Engineers Without Borders USA and a 2019-2021 Chapman Professor. Her email address is laura-ford@utulsa.edu.

Dr. Janie Brennan, Washington University in St. Louis

Janie Brennan is a Senior Lecturer of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University in 2015. Her research focuses on implementation of process safety material in the chemical engineering curriculum, effective laboratory instruction, and active learning in core chemical engineering courses.

Dr. David L. Silverstein P.E., University of Kentucky

David L. Silverstein is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Kentucky. He is also the Director of the College of Engineering's Extended Campus Programs in Paducah, Kentucky, where he has taught for 22 years. His PhD and MS studies in ChE were completed at Vanderbilt University, and his BSChE at the University of Alabama. Silverstein's research interests include conceptual learning tools and training, and he has particular interests in faculty development. He is the recipient of several ASEE awards, including the Fahein award for young faculty teaching and educational scholarship, the Corcoran award for best article in the journal Chemical Engineering Education (twice), and the Martin award for best paper in the ChE Division at the ASEE Annual Meeting.

Dr. Lucas James Landherr, Northeastern University

Dr. Lucas Landherr is a senior teaching professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Northeastern University, conducting research in comics and engineering education.

Dr. Christy Wheeler West, University of South Alabama

Christy Wheeler West is an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of South Alabama, where she also serves as Director of the Office of Undergraduate Research. She holds a Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology and a B.S. from the University of Alabama. She teaches material and energy balances and chemical reactor design, and endeavors to incorporate student professional development in her courses.

Dr. Stephen W. Thiel, University of Cincinnati

Stephen Thiel is a Professor-Educator in the Chemical Engineering program at the University of Cincinnati (UC). He received his BS in Chemical Engineering from Virginia Tech, and his MS and PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. His past research has focused on membrane science, adsorption, and ion exchange. He currently serves as the Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Program Director at UC and currently teaches the capstone process design sequence. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Ohio.

Dr. Kevin D. Dahm, Rowan University

Kevin Dahm is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Rowan University. He earned his BS from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (92) and his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (98). He has published two books, "Fundamentals of Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics" and "Interpreting Diffuse Reflectance and Transmittance." He has also published papers on effective use of simulation in engineering, teaching design and engineering economics, and assessment of student learning.

Dr. Jennifer Cole, Northwestern University

c American Society for Engineering Education, 2021

Paper ID #33380 Jennifer Cole is the Assistant Chair in Chemical and Biological Engineering in the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University and the Associate Director of the Northwestern Center for Engineering Education Research. Dr. Cole's primary teaching is in capstone and freshman design, and her research interest are in engineering design education. Prof. Marnie V. Jamieson, University of Alberta Marnie V. Jamieson, M. Sc., P.Eng. is an Industrial Professor in Chemical Process Design in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alberta and holds an M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering Education. She is currently the William Magee Chair in Chemical Process Design, leads the process design teaching team, manages the courses and industry interface. Her current research focuses on the application of blended and active learning to design teaching and learning, program content and structure, student assessment, and continuous course improvement techniques. She managed and was a key contributor to a two-year pilot project to introduce Blended Learning into Engineering Capstone Design Courses, and is a co-author with John M. Shaw on a number of recent journal, book, and conference contributions on engineering design education.

c American Society for Engineering Education, 2021

How We Teach: Kinetics and Reactor Design

Abstract

The Survey Committee of AIChE's Education Division surveys departments in the US and Canada each fall. Kinetics and reactor design or chemical reaction engineering was the topic for Fall 2020. This paper presents results from 87 different courses representing 80 distinct institutions as well as discussion from the survey session at the AIChE Annual Meeting. Results are compared with previous surveys in 2010 and earlier.

Almost all departments still require only one three-credit-hour course in kinetics and reactor design. Fogler's textbooks are still the most popular. Over 80% of courses cover topics through steady-state reactors in depth. Over 60% of courses also cover unsteady non-isothermal reactors and reaction hazards but with less depth. Over half of the courses responded that more than 50% of the homework assignments use a computer, which is a substantial increase from the survey in 2010. Exams and individual homework assignments are still the most popular assessments, but team homework and team projects are increasing. The course is used to assess the achievement of ABET Student Outcomes 1 and 2 in half of the courses. The majority of departments have laboratory exercises devoted to kinetics and reactor design in a required course, with experiments within the kinetics and reactor design courses themselves in over a quarter of departments.

Survey Distribution and Respondents

Each year the AIChE Education Division (EdDiv) Survey Committee surveys departments in the US and Canada over some portion of the undergraduate curriculum. The survey for 2020 presented in Appendix A was over kinetics and reactor design, also called chemical reaction engineering. The survey was created in Qualtrics and offered over the web and as a paper survey. It was distributed to the EdDiv Chairs email list, the EdDiv newsletter, EdDiv social media, EdDiv virtual community of practice on reactor design courses, the American Society for Engineering Education Chemical Engineering Division newsletter, and individual emails to chairs of Canadian chemical engineering departments in September and October 2020. The survey link was also posted during sessions at the AIChE Annual Meeting.

The 80 responding institutions are listed in Appendix B; thank you for your contributions. Three institutions have replies from two different professors who both teach the course. Not all questions were answered by all respondents. Comparing the survey respondents to the US and Canadian institutions overall is more difficult this year as ASEE has changed the data reported in their Engineering by the Numbers [1]. Graduating class sizes for the top 50 US chemical engineering programs by size are presented, and demographics are given only by all 160 US programs in aggregate. Twenty-two of the top 50 US programs by graduating class size responded to the survey. Top 50 by class size US institutions are nearly equally represented in the US (50 of 160, 31%) and our survey respondents (22 of 80, 28%). Figure 1 compares the graduating class size for our respondents in the top 50 to those top 50 US institutions by class size. Our respondents in this group do have larger class sizes by 8 students on average.

Graduating Class Size

260 240 220 200 180 160 140 120 100 80 Survey Respondents

US Programs

Figure 1. Graduating class sizes of the top 50 chemical engineering programs in the US by class size compared with survey-responding institutions within the top 50 by size. Note that the range is from 80 to 260 students.

Of the 80 distinct institutions, 92.5% (74) use semesters and 7.5% use trimesters. Institutions in the United States were 75 of the 80 responding institutions (93.5%), and 5 were Canadian, which is an increase from the 2019 EdDiv survey on the first year experience [2].

The vast majority of the 80 distinct departments required one three-credit-hour course, which has changed little over the surveys from 1974, 1984, 1991, and 2010 [3]. One course is required at 76 institutions, and four institutions require two courses. Of the four institutions requiring two courses, two are Canadian and one uses trimesters. For credit hours, 59 institutions (74%) have a 3-credit-hour course, and 13 (16%) have a 4-credit-hour course. Only two of the 4-credit-hour courses are offered at institutions on the quarter system. The range was from 0.5 to 36 credit hours, which may be credit units or other accounting systems.

Although the survey did not include the timing of the kinetics and reactor design course in the curriculum, the majority of the attendees at the survey discussion session at the 2020 AIChE Annual Meeting plan the course for the second semester of the junior year.

Fogler's Elements [4] and Essentials of Chemical Reaction Engineering [5] textbooks are still the most popular, used by 60% of the 85 reporting courses, as shown in Figure 2. Fogler's textbooks were also the most commonly used in the 1991 and 2010 surveys [6]. A sixth edition of the Folger Elements textbook was released in Fall 2020 but was not captured in this survey. The "Other" category includes books by Hill, Froment, Hayes, and Davis as well as others not further described. The websites used most often in 63 responding courses are the textbook website and the course's learning management system (Figure 3). Other resources not specifically listed in the figure include Chemical Safety Board videos [7], SACHE materials [8], CACHE learning modules [9], Concept Warehouse [10], and Wolfram Alpha.

% of courses

45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

Figure 2. Percentage of 85 courses using common kinetics and reactor design textbooks

0

Textbook website Course management system

LearnChemE U Mich Visual Encyclopedia

Property databanks Online (free) textbook YouTube or safety videos Literature/library search

Jupyter notebooks Other

No internet

Percent of courses 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

Figure 3. Percentage of 63 courses using various websites

We asked respondents about the topics covered in their courses, using the chapter titles from Fogler's Elements book and categories of "not covered', "some", and "in depth". In the 84 courses reporting, early topics in Fogler's text, through isothermal reactors, are nearly universally covered in depth (Figure 4). Multiple reactions are covered at least some at all reporting institutions.

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