Process Systems Engineering: an enhanced role in the curriculum?

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Process Systems Engineering:

an enhanced role in the curriculum?

Professor Sir William Wakeham

Immediate Past President, Institution of Chemical Engineers Senior Vice President, Royal Academy of Engineering

ESCAPE22

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Chemical Engineering Education

 Professional Context

- what is chemical engineering today, (in future)?

- who is the modern chemical engineer?

 Challenges of the Modern Curriculum

- what needs to be taught in the modern curriculum?

- how best to teach it?

 Consequences for Chemical Engineering Educators and Process Systems Engineering

Professional Context Challenges for Curriculum

(3)

A Special Role for Process

Systems Engineering?

 What can Systems Engineering bring ?

 Content

 Approach

 Why is anything needed?

 What else is happening?

 What might happen otherwise?

 Cannot it be done without our input?

 Who else is there?

Professional Context Challenges for Curriculum

(4)

Modern Chemical Engineering

Key Impact Areas

Professional Context

- chemical engineering today

Challenges for Curriculum

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Making an Impact (1)

Removing arsenic from drinking water

- chemical engineering today

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Consequences for Educators

Making an Impact (2)

Technical and Environmental Safety of CO2

Capture



80/20 CO2/CH4 mixture from existing gas well



Compression and transportation via 50mm pipe



Cost AU$40m



Injection commenced April 2008



65,000tonnes stored via CRC-1 well

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Making an Impact (3)

Growth of the ‘bio-domain’



Biofuels &

biorefining



‘Multicoloured’

biotechnology



Industrial

biotechnology:

€200bn - €440bn

market by 2025?

OH CO₂H OH N O NH F Lipitor (Atorvastatin): 2008 sales = $10 bn Professional Context

(8)

Chemical Engineering Innovation

Engine to drive global business

DIFFERENTIATED ORGANISATIONS

Policymakers

Socie

ty

Knowledge Providers

Mature Industrial Players

Startups Service, Goods Providers

Science & Technology Financial Sponsors

Ext

ernal

Fact

or

s

Technology & Business

Marketing & Commercial

KEY DISCIPLINES KEY SKILL SETS

- the chemical engineer

Eng in eer in g In tens ifi ca tion

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ONLY IF

... powered by the best fuel

Competent, Multi-skilled engineers



The engineer as Specialist

a continued need for engineering graduates who are technical experts of world-class standing.



The engineer as Integrator

operating and managing across boundaries,

technical or organisational, in a complex business environment.



The engineer as Change Agent

a critical role in providing the creativity, innovation, and leadership to guide the industry to a successful future.

Source: Educating Engineers for the 21st_Century

N Spinks, N Silburn & D Birchall, study by Henley Management College for the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, 2006

Professional Context - the chemical engineer

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Chemical Engineers

Desired Skills & Attributes (Industry)

Technical

 Theoretical understanding

 Practical application

 Technical breadth

 Creativity & innovation

Enabling

 Communication & negotiation

 Team working & collaboration

 Ethics

 (Global) Business skills, commercial awareness

Graduate engineers need Systems Thinking perspectives.

Professional Context - the chemical engineer

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Challenge

Learning Outcome Assessment

 The modern engineer needs much more than just

underpinning knowledge!

 ‘Knowing’ is composed of 6 successive hierarchial

levels (Bloom’s Taxonomy )

Evaluation Ability to judge value of material for a given purpose

Synthesis Ability to put parts together

Analysis Ability to breakdown information into its components

Application Ability to use learned material in new situations

Comprehension Ability to understand and interpret learned information

Knowledge Ability to recall or remember facts without necessarily understanding them

Professional Context

Challenges for Curriculum

- Learning outcomes assessment

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Challenge

Problem Based, Project Based &

Student Centred Learning

Traditional Student Centred

Tutor fountain of knowledge Passive role

Tutor led

Taught to syllabus

Learning fixed to classroom Didactic

Tutor as facilitator Active role

Partnership Agreed syllabus

Not restricted to time or place Interactive, using range of methods

 PBL & SCL are driving institutions to develop new

approaches to learning, a strategy that has clear tangible benefits....

- Pedagocgical methods

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DESIGN

B

DEPTH

CORE

R

A

H

T

D

E

Chemical Engineering Curriculum

Essential knowledge and understanding

Critical Components…….

- essential content

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DESIGN

B

DEPTH

CORE

R

A

H

T

D

E

Chemical Engineering Curriculum

Embedded Learning

Critical Components

&

Challenges for Curriculum - essential content



Sustainability



Process Safety & Risk



Ethics



‘Soft skills’



Research

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Curriculum Design Issue 1

Education or Training?



A philosophical high level decision

- fundamentals/vocation

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Curriculum Design Issue 2

Defining detailed Structure

Key considerations will include:

 Depth versus Breadth of chemical engineering

study

 Embedded learning

 Integrated Design

 Professional Practice & laboratories

 Research informed teaching

 Delivery methodologies

- Unit ops/engineering science

(17)

Industry Experience

high value of the experience led component

Direct

 Industrial placement year

 Industrial work opportunities/placements

Indirect

 Industrial simulation

 Case studies

 Project based learning

 Site visits

Other Opportunities

 eg IChemE Student Exchange

 Visiting Professors

- Gaining industry experience

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Industry Experience

(‘Industry or Visiting Professors’)

Strategically

 Review design course, invigorating staff and students

 Resolve issues between disciplines

 Set up industry liaison groups

 Bring universities and industry together

Practically

 Lectures and workshops

 Advise design groups

 Supervise and assess

 Discuss professional experiences

- Role of industry professors

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Embedded Learning

Standards

for

Process Safety/Culture

 IChemE requires students to be instilled with appropriate attitudes to HSE and minimum core process safety

 Departments must therefore demonstrate appropriate safety cultures and practice of operation

 Appropriate records/documentation of hazard assessment and controls on lab equipment/processes are also expected

 Initiatives such as that of the Virtual Plant Walkthrough

(Melbourne, Queensland, Curtin, Sydney Consortium) are

welcomed

- Process safety

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Chemical Process Design and the

Design Project

- Process Design

 The creation of a process, product or plant to meet a

defined need.

 The application of engineering principles to the

solution of a practical process engineering problem:  requires conceptual exploration

 develops an integrated systems approach

 encourages the application of chemical engineering principles to solve problems

 encourages students to demonstrate creative & critical powers by making choices in areas of uncertainty

 encourages the development of communication and

other transferable skills

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Systems Engineering?

In a world of:

• Increased breadth of discipline

• Identity blurring • Mulit-disciplinarity • Multi-sector employment • Curriculum proliferation • Curriculum extension what provides:

coherence, integration and identity

 Chemical Process Design and the Design

Project?

It did once but it is at the end of the course

It is, in the end an example of the

integration/coherence not the philosophy of it

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Could it be Systems Engineering?

Should it be Systems Engineering?

I would argue that for too long Systems Engineering has been somewhat of a Cinderella subject in the curriculum

Perhaps unwilling to take centre stage Unwilling to lead in the educational area

There is now an opportunity and perhaps a need for Systems Engineers to stand up and be counted and take a central role in the education of

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Could it be Systems Engineering?

Should it be Systems Engineering?

•The Academic Community in Process Engineering is

strong

•Systems Analysis is at the hear of most engineering

endeavour

•Systems Analysis and Engineering have applications

in many endeavours within and outside engineering

•It provides a sound strand of an engineering training

•It provides a framework for the curriculum in

Chemical/Process Engineering and the students

•Leadership in academic Chemical and Process

Engineering is needed now

•It could provide a way to put Chemical/Process

Engineering ahead of other disciplines