CBE 20255

Introduction to Chemical Engineering

Fall 2005

Course Goals

Students who complete this course should be able to:

1. Use mathematical models of chemical engineering systems to obtain quantitative results and qualitative descriptions of behavior. Also, be able to develop such models from the conservation laws of mass and energy and appropriate constitutive relationships for relatively simple systems.

2. Understand the principle of mass conservation and the equations (i.e., overall mass balance, species mass balances) that are commonly used to represent this including terms for inflows and outflows, chemical reaction and accumulation.

3. Understand the principle of energy conservation (first law of thermodynamics) including terms such as heat, work, internal energy, enthalpy, kinetic energy, potential energy, pressure, temperature

4. Understand the energy balance including terms for inflows and outflows, chemical reaction and accumulation.

5. To solve engineering problems for steady state, transient, open and closed systems that could have different phases present and within which chemical reactions could be occurring using the mass and energy balances.

6. Understand the concept of equilibrium with particular applications to the phase equilibria of mixtures of immiscible phases.

7. Understand constitutive equations and why these are needed, along with fundamental laws, to describe physical, chemical and biological systems.

8. Solve systems of algebraic and first order differential equations using canned packages and student written programs using Matlab.

9. Appreciate that engineering often involves solution of problems that have varying degrees of uncertainty and for which there may an infinite number of solutions with a "best" answer defined by how the criteria for "optimal" are chosen.

10. Understand units, dimensions, checking for dimensional consistency and dimensional analysis.