Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Special topics in sustainable energy engineering. Students may repeat this course for further credit under a different topic.

COURSE DETAILS:

Course Description*

Humanity faces unprecedented engineering design challenges in cleaning up our planet. Removing greenhouse gases from our atmosphere is essential to mitigate the growing impacts of climate change while giving clean energy technologies time to conceptualize and scale up. Harmful perfluorinated “forever chemicals” have been detected in some of the most remote places on Earth, from Mount Everest to the deep ocean, which warrants separation processes in the hydrosphere. In the lithosphere, ending the “Plasticene era” of our planet is also an important endeavour - plastics are not just floating in water, they are now found embedded in rock formations, forming a new class of geological materials.

SEE 475 explores the fundamental principles in designing sustainable separation processes to capture and remove contaminants from air, water, and soil. Multidisciplinary physicochemical processes that drive separation and purification strategies are introduced, drawing knowledge from chemical engineering, materials science, and environmental remediation. Principles and philosophies to design sustainable processes will be addressed in a team design project.

Subjects and Topics*

Lectures*

• Introduction to sustainable separations engineering, mass and energy balances
• Thermodynamics of separation processes
• Mass transfer in separations processes
• Unit operations fundamentals
• Separation processes in the atmosphere
• Separation processes in the hydrosphere
• Separation processes in the lithosphere
• Carbon capture engineering

Tutorials*

• Review of fundamentals: basic principles and calculations in separations engineering
• Problems in mass and energy balances
• Problems in chemical thermodynamics
• Problems in mass transfer
• Problems in applied separations processes

Labs*

• Introduction to AutoCAD
• Introduction to Aspen Process Simulation
• Applied topics in AutoCAD
• Applied topics in Aspen Process Simulation

Indicative Learning Activities*

• Work in teams to design a sustainable separations process
• Individual assessments through in-class exams
• Team assignments through tutorial problem sets
• Visit to a carbon capture facility or a chemical manufacturing plant (to be decided during the semester)
• Participate in guest lectures from professional engineers

Note: all sections marked with an asterisk (*) are subject to minor changes until the start of the semester. Finalized details will be provided in the first lecture.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

The intended course learning outcomes, and their respective graduate attributes (GA) and evaluation levels, Introduced (I), Developed (D), Applied (A) are as follows:

• Define the principles of separation processes based on phases of materials (GA 1 – A, GA 2 – A)
• Explain fundamental variables in separations engineering: mole concept, concentrations, pressure, temperature, mole fractions in single and multi-component systems (GA 1 – A, GA 2 – A)
• Calculate material balances and energy balances in open, closed and isolated systems (GA 1 – A, GA 2 – A, GA 3 – A)
• Explain concepts in chemical thermodynamics: Gibbs free energy, chemical potential, fugacity, activity and equilibrium ratios (GA 1 – A, GA 2 – A, GA 3 – A, GA 5 – A)
• Explain mass transfer and determine mass transfer fluxes in separation processes (GA 1 – A, GA 2 – A, GA 3 – A, GA 5 – A)
• Construct neat Process Flow Diagrams (PFDs) to pictorially depict flow processes (GA 1 – A, GA 4 – A, GA 6 – D, GA 7 – A)
• Delineate the principles to size important separations equipment (GA 1 – A, GA 2 – A, GA 4 – A, GA 5 – A,
• Explain concepts in process safety management, and hazard and operability studies (GA 1 – A, GA 2 – A, GA 3 – A, GA 4 – A, GA 9 – D)
• Apply separations processes principles in environmental systems: carbon capture and water remediation (GA 1 – A, GA 2 – A, GA 3 – A, GA 4 – A, GA 9 – D)
• Learn the philosophy of working in engineering teams to design sustainable separation processes plants (GA 3 – A, GA 4 – A, GA 6 – D, GA 7 – A, GA 8 – D, GA 9 – D, GA 10 – D)

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

RECOMMENDED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: