Teaching Process Design – Quo Vadis?

The capstone course in chemical process design, together with its associated design project is the acid test to gauge the mastery of trainee chemical engineers. There is no other component in the chemical engineering curriculum that performs this function to this degree. This paper presents the results of an international survey to investigate the current teaching practices with regards to instruction in chemical process design. The results indicate that virtually all capstone courses have substantial group-based design projects. Process simulation is used extensively, while the targeted technical skills are often still classical design and economic evaluation techniques. Heat integration is also very highly considered (93% of respondents) perhaps reflecting awareness of global energy issues. Interestingly, the way teaching session time is distributed between activities (e.g. lecturing versus active learning techniques) falls into a clear bimodal distribution, reflecting distinct teaching philosophies and styles.