ChE curriculum

DESIGN PROJECTS OF THE FUTURE

JOSEPH A. SHAEIWITZ AND RICHARD TURTON

West Virginia University • Morgantown, WV 26506-6102

I
t is generally accepted that the chemical engineering pro- be replaced by newcomers equally capable of operating, main-
fession is in a state of change. Fewer graduates from U.S. taining, and updating existing chemical plants.
chemical engineering departments are entering the pe- Given the importance of the capstone experience in the
troleum, petrochemical, and chemical industries, since most undergraduate education process, a question that arises when
expansion in these industries is not in the United States. More considering curriculum changes is: What will the capstone
graduates from U.S. chemical engineering departments are chemical engineering design project of the future look like?
entering product-based industries (e.g., pharmaceutical, food, It is virtually certain that the capstone chemical engineering
new materials) rather than the traditional commodity-chemi- project of the future will not involve sulfuric acid or ethylene
cal-based industries (ethylene oxide, benzene, sulfuric oxide production. Instead, it may have a life science basis. It
acid).[1, 2] Therefore, changes in the undergraduate chemical may involve design of a product. It may involve multiscale
engineering curriculum—which has been static for about 40 phenomena, i.e., the effect of nano- or molecular-scale inter-
years (not counting advances in computing)—are imminent, actions on the performance of the product. It is more likely to
if not already in progress. involve batch processing than continuous processing. And, it
Three significant changes in the chemical engineering cur- is also possible that manufacture of items and unit packag-
riculum are under way.[3] First of all, biology is now consid- ing—two concepts far removed from traditional chemical
ered to be an “enabling” science, along with chemistry and engineering—will be included.
physics. Some education in the life sciences will soon be re-
quired for accreditation.[4] Secondly, chemical engineers need
to be taught about product design, either instead of or in ad- Joseph A. Shaeiwitz received his B.S. de-
gree from the University of Delaware and his
dition to process design. It will become more important to M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Carnegie
teach batch operations, since the manufacture of new chemi- Mellon University. His professional interests
are in design, design education, and out-
cal products will certainly involve batch rather than continu- comes assessment. Joe is an associate edi-
ous operations. Finally, over the past generation, advances in tor of Journal of Engineering Education, and
chemical engineering research have involved the ability to he is a co-author of the text Analysis, Syn-
thesis, and Design of Chemical Processes
understand and to manipulate phenomena at the colloidal, (2nd Ed.), published by Prentice Hall in 2003.
nano, molecular, and atomic scales. A key issue is the effect
on macroscopic properties of colloidal-, nano-, molecular-,
and atomic-scale phenomena, i.e., structure-property relations. Richard Turton received his B.S. degree
from the University of Nottingham and his
It is time these advances became part of the undergraduate M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Oregon State
curriculum. University. His research interests are in flu-
idization and particle technology and their
Radical changes to the traditional chemical engineering application to particle coating for pharma-
curriculum have been proposed.[3] Changes are on the hori- ceutical applications. Dick is a co-author of
the text Analysis, Synthesis, and Design of
zon, although the speed and degree of implementation of these Chemical Processes (2nd Ed.), published by
changes is not yet obvious. It could also be argued, however, Prentice Hall in 2003.
that traditional chemical process engineering must still be
taught, because the soon-to-retire baby boom generation must © Copyright ChE Division of ASEE 2006

88 Chemical Engineering Education

 In an effort to initiate a new capstone-design paradigm, the is to make students realize that they will have to continue
yearlong capstone design project at West Virginia University learning new material throughout their careers, and that they
for 2003-04 and 2004-05 involved biologically oriented, have the ability to do so.
multiscale product designs. These two projects are described In the fall semester, the project involves researching alter-
in this paper. More details are available elsewhere[5] and from natives and a feasibility study. For example, in ice cream pro-
the authors. duction, the assignment was to identify, screen, and recom-
mend food products for production, with attention focused
CLASS ORGANIZATION on products that have low-fat and/or low-carbohydrate alter-
In the senior year of chemical engineering at West Virginia natives. Students set their own direction with a minimum of
University, the entire class works on a large project for two input from the instructors. The client chooses one alternative
semesters under the direction of a student chief engineer. More for design in the spring semester. This is really the only op-
details are presented elsewhere.[6] Briefly, faculty members portunity for the instructors to influence the direction of the
play roles: one is the client, for whom the students are “hired” project; however, the client’s choice is always one of the top
to complete a design project; another is the “vice president” two student recommendations.
of the students’ company, who helps the students with tech-
nical matters. The student chief engineer divides the class
ICE CREAM PRODUCTION
into groups, each headed by a group leader. The role of the
chief engineer is to represent the entire team to the client and This project was completed by 26 students over the course
to provide leadership from the “big picture” perspective. The of the entire 2004-05 academic year. It started with a very
group leaders receive assignments from the chief engineer open-ended assignment: to investigate opportunities in food
and are responsible for completing the work within their processing, particularly those involving low-fat and low-car-
groups. Assignments are deliberately vague and open ended. bohydrate alternatives. The market for these foods was to be
One goal is to force students to define their own work state- analyzed, and the issues associated with producing the low-
ment, with input from faculty members. Another is to learn fat and low-carbohydrate alternatives were to be identified.
material not normally taught in class. The exact topics stu- A summary of the colloidal- and molecular-scale issues iden-
dents must learn are a function of the project. A further goal tified by students is shown Table 1. Production of any of these

TABLE 1
Examples of Colloidal- and Molecular-Scale Processing Challenges in Food Manufacturing

Product Processing Challenge

Ice Cream Ice crystal formation must be kept to a minimum. Otherwise, the ice cream has a grainy texture.

Nut and fruit size must be controlled to control the rheology. Processing conditions must be controlled to prevent nuts and fruit
additives from becoming soggy.

One method for making low-fat ice cream have the same mouth feel as regular ice cream is slow churning, a proprietary process of
Edy/Dreyers.[5] By churning the ice cream at higher pressures and lower temperatures, smaller, more dispersed fat globules are
formed that have similar mouth feel to regular ice cream.

Cookies Almond flour is often substituted for wheat flour in low-carbohydrate cookies. Since almond flour contains more fat, the result is a
chewier cookie.

Granulated sugar is required in cookie manufacture so that the sugar will spread throughout the cookie during baking. Coarse sugar
results in cracking. This has implications as to which sugar substitute can be used in low-carbohydrate cookies.

Reduced-fat cookies require longer baking times to allow the existing fat to coat the flour and sugar particles.

For sandwich cookies to stick together, the surface energy of the solid must be higher than that of the filling. One way to accom-
plish this is to raise the temperature of the filling and add more fat to the filling, both of which reduce its surface energy. (This is
also true for ice cream sandwiches.)

Bread Protein and fiber are often substituted for wheat flour in low-carbohydrate bread. Binding agents are required to hold these
ingredients together. Dough conditioners are added for strength.

Cereal Bars Binders are added to hold the cereal pieces together. They crosslink to form a flow-resistant structure. There are two common
binders. One involves dipolar interactions between OH groups on glucose molecules in the binder and the cereal pieces. The other
involves COO- groups bonding covalently with the cereal pieces.

Spring 2006 89
products would make a good design project. Each involves Stabilizers and emulsifiers are essential in the production
batch processing of a product as well as manipulation at the of ice cream products. Both components help to give ice cream
molecular or colloidal levels to obtain desired macroscopic a smooth body and texture and help to improve the overall
properties. Another feature involved, but traditionally unfa- mouth feel of the ice cream. Stabilizers work by reducing the
miliar to chemical engineers, is packaging. amount of free water in the ice cream mixture. This retards
Students used product screening methods to rank the alter- ice-crystal growth during storage and also provides resistance
natives.[7] Ultimately, ice cream production to capture 1% of to melting. Stabilization is accomplished through two mecha-
the domestic market was chosen for a complete design. Pro- nisms, depending on the type of stabilizer used, and both
duction of 1.75-quart containers plus some novelties (pops mechanisms may be involved depending on the structure of
and bars, in this case) were included in the design. Ice cream the gum used. Charged gums, such as carageenan, help to
production involves traditional chemical engineering, prod- reduce the amount of free water because the charged groups
uct design, and multiscale analysis. It involves application of interact with water to restrict the movement of water mol-
principles of chemical engineering at scales from the mo- ecules within the mixture. Branched gums, such as guar gum,
lecular level to the process level. also reduce free water within the system. This is accomplished
because the branched side chains contain hydroxyl groups
Ice Cream Science. There are three categories of ingredi- that hydrogen-bond with water, a reaction that also reduces
ents in the ice cream mix: dairy, sweeteners, and additives. the amount of free water. Similarly, emulsifiers help to re-
Milk, cream, and nonfat milk solids make up the dairy por- duce fat-globule coalescence by stabilizing the fat globules
tion of ice cream. Sucrose or Splenda® is used to sweeten the within the ice cream matrix. Mono- and diglycerides are the
mix, and stabilizers and emulsifiers are added to give the ice most commonly used emulsifying agents. The addition of sta-
cream the desired body and mouth feel. Significant quanti- bilizers and emulsifiers is particularly important for ice
ties of air are also present in finished ice cream. Standard ice cream base mixes that are lower in fat content, because
cream contains an equal volume of mix and air, or an “over- whole milk already contains natural stabilizing and emul-
run” of 100%. Premium ice cream, however, has an overrun sifying materials.
of only 80% to give it a richer, more-creamy,
mouth feel.
Milk is a colloidal suspension of water,
fat, and milk solids. Fat particles in the sus- 20
pension range in size from 0.8 to 20 m m. The Atkins® Low-Carb
sugar—lactose—is also present in milk, at a Kroger® Standard
15
Viscosity (Poise)

concentration of about 4.9%. In “lactose- Haagen-Dazs® Premium

free” ice creams, the milk is treated with
10
the enzyme lactase, which breaks lactose
down into the simpler sugars glucose and
galactose. 5
In this design, regular table sugar, or su-
crose, is used as a sweetener in all the ice 0
cream mixes except the low-carbohydrate ice 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
cream. Sucralose is used to sweeten the low- Shear Rate (1/sec)
carbohydrate ice cream because it is indigest-
ible but still sweetens the mix.
Figure 1. Viscosity of different ice cream products.

Mixing Pasteurization & Flavor

Aging
Ingredients Homogenization Mixing
Figure 2.
Block flow diagram
for ice cream
production.

Freezing Cartoning Hardening

90 Chemical Engineering Education

 The viscosity of ice cream varies with the type. During a Refrigeration Cycle. Refrigeration (600 tons) is required
class tour of a local ice cream production facility, the host three places: in the warehouse, in the hardening step in ice
remarked that production of low-carbohydrate ice cream was cream production, and for cooling the milk at the front end of
“difficult on the equipment,” which had been placed into the process. An ammonia refrigeration-cycle design, used for
operation before low-carbohydrate ice cream was developed. the warehouse, is displayed in Figure 3. The refrigeration cycle
Further investigation revealed that many ice creams, particu- is a traditional chemical engineering component of this de-
larly the low-carbohydrate vanillas, contain TiO2 pigments sign. Using the number of interstage coolers on the compres-
to make the ice cream look whiter. It is possible that the TiO2 sors and the type of cooling medium used in E-101 through
colloidal particles cause erosion of process equipment. Stu- E-104 as decision variables, students optimized the refrig-
dents also wondered whether there was a variation between eration process.
viscosities of different ice cream types. One student, who was
doing research in the polymer research laboratory of our col- Steam Generation. In the facility, low-pressure steam is
league Rakesh Gupta, measured the viscosity of three types of used for pasteurization, for jacketed heating of the mixing
ice cream. The results are shown in Figure 1. Low-carbohy- equipment, and for heating water for equipment cleaning.
drate ice cream is clearly more viscous than standard ice cream. These steps are necessary to ensure that there is no product
contamination by bacteria, which is part of “good manufac-
Facility Design. A facility to manufacture, store, and ship turing processes” in food production. Therefore, a typical
ice cream was designed. Production volumes were 52 mil- steam-production facility was designed.
lion 1.75-quart ice cream containers (varying flavors), 2.3
million six-packs of sandwiches, and 4.3 million six-packs Wastewater. A system was designed to process wastewater
of pops (ice cream bars with sticks). The manufacturing pro- from the ice cream manufacturing facility. There were two
cess of the ice cream facility is broken down into seven steps, reasons for this. First, it was assumed that the ice cream plant
as illustrated in Figure 2. A 5400-m2 warehouse for ice cream would produce too much additional wastewater for an exist-
storage was also designed. It was designed to hold three ing municipal wastewater facility. Second, based on infor-
months of production. Because of the need to refrigerate the mation from the local water authority, having a water treat-
warehouse, the construction requires special insulation, and ment facility in-house appeared to be the less-expensive op-
the capital investment for this part of the process (>80%) tion. Wastewater treatment is needed because the equipment
dominates the overall fixed capital investment (almost $100 must be cleaned daily, generating significant amounts of
million)—a result that was not anticipated. wastewater. The operation plan involves production on two

11

C-102

7
3 38
C-103
E-101
C-101 12
4
3
14 15
Continuous Figure 3.
Freezer cw
System
C-104 PFD for the
13 optimized
3
16 ammonia
refrigeration
Ammonia (L)
24 cw E-102 system
23 unit 1.
6 Hardener
Cold System 22
Storage 17
1

V-101 C-105
21

18

cw E-103

5
3 20
5
3 19

cw
10 3
9
E-104

Spring 2006 91
 Weighing
Coating Drying Lamination
&
Figure 4. Mixing
Block flow diagram
for transdermal
drug delivery patch
manufacture. Cutting
Inspection & Cartoning
Packaging

shifts per day followed by a cleaning shift. Most a

of the cleaning is done using hot water. M1 M2 M3 M4 M5
C0 C1i
Economics. It costs approximately $0.56 to C1 K4
produce a 1.75-quart container of ice cream, in-
cluding the initial capital investment. Even with
the markup associated with the food distribu-
C2 C2i
tion chain, the process is very profitable. The
net present value (NPV) was found to be $97 C3 C4i
C3i C5
million, assuming a 10-year plant lifetime and C4 C5i C6
K1 K2 K3
a 15% before-tax rate of return. A Monte Carlo
analysis showed that there is only an 8% chance
of losing money, i.e., an NPV less than zero. Patch Stratum Epidermis Dermis Capillary Blood
Corneum Wall
Remarks from an ice cream expert at the final
student presentation indicated that prices for b M1 M2
milk products could vary over a wide range,
leading to significantly greater variation in the C0 K1 C2i
C1
NPV. These factors were not considered in
C1i
the students’ analysis but could easily be in-
corporated.
C2
DESIGN OF A TRANSDERMAL
DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEM C2i=0 C3=0

This project was completed by 11 students

over the course of the entire 2003-04 academic Patch Stratum Blood
Corneum
year. It also started with a very open-ended as-
signment: to investigate alternative forms of
drug delivery, and to suggest a product to be Figure 5. Model for diffusion through skin layers.
manufactured. Within the transdermal patch
category, students learned the properties that
make a drug suitable for use in a transdermal
patch, which are: (1) low molecular weight, (2)
Patch Blood
k1 k2
high potency, so low dosage required, (3) resis-
C1, V1 C2, V2
tance to enzymes in skin layers, and (4) desire
to have constant dosage in body over time. Item
number 4 means that a transdermal patch would
not be used to treat a simple headache, because,
for a headache, rapid entry of the drug into the Figure 6. Two-compartment pharmacokinetic model.
blood is desired. Students used product-
screening methods to choose between alternative drugs.[7] Patch Design. The patch contains norelgestromin and ethinyl
Ultimately, production of a contraceptive transdermal estradiol. The proposed size of the patch is 10 cm2, manufac-
patch for females was chosen for a complete design. tured as a single-layer, matrix system.

92 Chemical Engineering Education

 Pressure-sensitive adhesives are the common form of ad-
A . . . goal is to make students realize that
hesive used in transdermal systems. They are permanently
tacky at room temperature, they are easily applied with light they will have to continue learning new
pressure, and they do not require solvents for activation. material throughout their careers, and that
Polyisobutylene was chosen because it provides excellent they have the ability to do so.
adhesion in high-moisture environments and because of its low
cost. Polyisobutylene has a surface tension of 30-32 dyne/cm,
of return. No information was available from industry sources
which is lower than the critical surface tension of skin of 38-
to verify these assumptions or the resulting NPV estimate.
56 dyne/cm, depending on humidity and temperature. There-
fore, the adhesive will wet the skin—a requirement for adhe- Mathematical Modeling. In the design of a transdermal
sion. This is an example of colloid-scale considerations in patch, the dose is a key factor to consider. The drug is deliv-
the transdermal patch design. ered from the patch to the body by diffusion through the
multiple layers of skin, so students were required to model
Skin penetration enhancers increase the mass flux of a drug
diffusion through multiple, immiscible layers. The flux of a
across the desired surface area. The driving force for the drug
given drug from a transdermal system into the body can be
is the concentration gradient between the patch and the skin.
modeled as shown in Figure 5a. The result is
The enhancer used in this patch is crospovidone, which draws
water to the surface of the skin. This in turn causes swelling,
Cn
which provides more surface area for diffusion. C0 -
j=
’M j (1)
Excipients are ingredients within a drug product that are 1 1
+Â
n
considered inactive, from a pharmacological perspective. In j=1
K0 Ê n ˆ
this case, there is one excipient used, propylene glycol K jÁ ’ M j˜
Á ˜
monolaurate, which acts as an emollient. Ë j=1 ¯
Manufacturing. The block flow diagram for manufacture
of the transdermal patch is shown in Figure 4. It is a batch where C0 is the concentration of the drug in the patch, Kj is
operation. First, the ingredients must be weighed and mixed. the inverse of the resistance to diffusion of the drug provided
The drugs are mixed with the adhesive. The appropriate mix- by each skin layer, and Mj is the partition coefficient of the
ing time and impeller arrangement are estimated using typi- drug between a layer and the subsequent layer (Mj = Cji/Cj).
cal chemical engineering principles.[8] Then, the mixture is It was found that the rate-limiting step is diffusion through
coated on the backing. Hexane is used as a solvent to help the stratum corneum layer. So, if it is assumed that the con-
lower the viscosity of the solution and to ensure a well-mixed centration in the blood is zero (Cn = 0), the model reduces to
product. After coating, the hexane is evaporated and is sub- Figure 5b, and Equation (1) becomes
sequently incinerated, because it was determined that there j = C 0 K1M1 (2)
was not enough hexane present to justify a recovery system.
A pharmacokinetic model was also developed, which can
Next, the release liner is added to sandwich the drug/adhe-
be used to predict the concentration of the active ingredients
sive mixture. After inspection (as required by law) large sheets
in the blood. The model is illustrated in Figure 6, and the
are cut into 10 cm2 patches, packaged individually, and then
equations are
packaged again, three per carton. Finally, cartons of the three-
packs are packaged for distribution. dC1 - k1C1
= (3)
Part of the design involved identifying “good manufactur- dt V1
ing practices” in the pharmaceutical industry, which ensure dC 2 k1C1 - k 2C 2
that the product is pure and free of contamination. = (4 )
dt V2
Economics. Students determined that the cost of manufac-
turing one patch is between $0.28 and $0.30, depending on where C1 is the concentration of an active ingredient in the
employee salaries and the plant location. The U.S. pharmacy patch, k1 is the elimination rate constant from the patch, V1 is
price for a similar, brand-name product is approximately $15 the volume of the patch, C2 is the concentration of the active
per patch. Since this product is to be a generic version, it was ingredient in the blood, k2 is the elimination rate constant
assumed that its price would be about half of the brand-name from the blood, and V2 represents the volume of blood in
product. The markup at the pharmacy is assumed to be twice which the drug is distributed. Students fit this model to pub-
the price for which it was purchased. Therefore, the estimated lished data to determine the values of k1 and k2.[9, 10]
manufacturer’s patch price is $3.75. Selling the patches for Multiscale Design. In terms of multiscale analysis, design
$3.75 per patch yields a net present value of $684 million of a transdermal drug delivery system requires design from
assuming a 10-year plant lifetime and a 15% before-tax rate the molecular scale through the macroscopic scale. These

Spring 2006 93
items are summarized in Table 2. At the molecular scale, the DISCUSSION
drug itself is designed. This is beyond the scope of this project. One of the advantages of a project such as ice cream pro-
At either the molecular or nano scales, one finds the pres- duction is that it has traditional chemical engineering com-
ence of excipients and/or enhancers in the patch. The adhe- ponents (e.g., refrigeration cycle, wastewater treatment, steam
sive to hold the transdermal patch production) along with multiscale
to the skin could involve design considerations, product design and
at multiple scales. Since the drug TABLE 2 manufacture, and packaging. De-
Length Scales and their Application to
is mixed with the adhesive, if there sign of a transdermal drug patch has
the Transdermal Patch Problem
were a molecular interaction be- a stronger life science component
tween the drug and adhesive, it nano scale the action of enhancers and excipients at and involves more transport phe-
would have to be understood. For a molecular level on the skin surface nomena-oriented mathematical
an adhesive to stick, it must wet modeling (i.e., systems analysis)
colloid scale mechanism of adhesion
the skin, so an understanding of than a traditional chemical pro-
colloid-scale wetting phenomena transdermal transport phenomena cess design.
micro scale
is required. The patch must be re- pharmacokinetics
While the multiscale aspects of
moved without significant dis- these projects have been identified,
macro scale product manufacture
comfort, yet not become detached the molecular-scale phenomena
in the shower or during physical have not yet been incorporated into
activity that causes sweating—both macro-scale phenomena. the design. For example, we do not believe that we are in a
At the microscopic scale, the mechanism of transport of the position to design a new drug or to manipulate the micro-
drug through the skin must be understood. Modeling drug structure of ice cream. If, however, a product design assign-
transport through the skin layers is standard transport phe- ment were based on a faculty member’s research, it might be
nomena. Similarly, there is system modeling, in which the possible to include molecular-, nano-, or colloidal-scale de-
pharmacokinetics of the drug in the body can be modeled. sign aspects, especially if students were in a position to per-
Finally, at the macroscopic scale, the components must form experiments.
be combined appropriately, manufactured into the desired
product, and packaged for sale. A reasonable question is what other design projects of this
type are envisioned. The list of potential life science-related
ASSESSMENT projects is long and could include innovative drug-delivery
devices (e.g., drugs on a chip) or tissue growth. Our class of
Two assessment measures were used. In one, the two in- 2003 designed a facility for the batch production of amino
structors use a rubric to evaluate, separately, all aspects of acids.[5] Design of a microprocessor production facility would
the final design report and oral presentation submitted by the involve multiscale phenomena and could also involve tradi-
students each semester. This rubric was developed in the con- tional chemical engineering in the production of ultra-pure
text of more traditional chemical engineering design prob- water and in wastewater treatment. Design of an advanced
lems. For example, since biology is not (yet) required in our material based on its micro- or nano-structure is also pos-
curriculum, it is not listed as a science that students are ex- sible. The importance of multiscale phenomena in paper
pected to demonstrate an ability to apply. The ability to learn manufacture was recently presented,[12] so manufacture of fine
and to apply biological concepts as needed is evaluated un- paper products is a possibility.
der the ability to learn new material not taught in class. The
complete rubric is available on the Web.[11] Table 3 shows the More detailed synopses of these projects are available on
results, averaged for the two instructors, for both projects. our design project Web site.[5] The final reports are also avail-
The score of three indicates meets expectations, and the score able to faculty members by contacting the authors.
of four indicates exceeds expectations. Clearly, our assess-
ment of the students suggests that they exhibited superior CONCLUSIONS
performance in the ability to teach themselves new material. As the profession of chemical engineering moves toward
In our student evaluation of instruction, it is possible for product development and design and away from process de-
the instructor to add an individually defined question. Table velopment and design, a new paradigm for chemical engi-
4 shows several such questions and the student responses. neering education is evolving, requiring a new generation of
The responses are on a 5-point Likert Scale, thus indicating capstone design projects. Two examples have been presented
student responses were all between “agree” and “strongly here. In ice cream manufacture, multiscale considerations are
agree.” Therefore, we conclude that the students involved in important, yet there are traditional chemical engineering com-
these projects believed them to be beneficial. ponents included. Production of other food products involves

94 Chemical Engineering Education

many of the same considerations. In design of a transdermal Portions of this paper were presented at the 2004 ASEE
drug delivery patch, life science considerations, multiscale Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT, session 3413
factors, and systems modeling are required. Both involve as- (transdermal patch) and at the 2005 ASEE Annual Meeting,
pects of product design. They also require manufacture and Portland, OR, session 3113 (ice cream).
packaging of unit items—topics traditionally foreign to chemi-
cal engineering education. As the chemical engineering cur- REFERENCES
1. Cussler, E.L., and J. Wei, “Chemical Product Engineering,” AIChE J,
riculum changes in response to the changes in our profes- 49, 1072-1075 (2003)
sion, similar design projects will find their way into capstone 2. Cussler, E.L., “Do Changes in the Chemical Industry Imply Changes
experiences. in Curriculum?” Chem. Eng. Ed., 33(1) 12 (1999)
3. <http://mit.edu/che-curriculum/>
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 4. Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs (2006-07 cycle), ABET,
Inc., Baltimore, p. 27
The following students worked on the transdermal patch: 5. <http://www.che.cemr.wvu.edu/publications/projects/index.php>
Matthew Anderson, Jeffrey Bickar, Gregory Hackett, Joseph 6. Shaeiwitz, J.A., W.B. Whiting, and D. Velegol, “A Large-Group Se-
Kitzmiller, Lindsay Kruska, John Ramsey, Samuel Smith, nior Design Experience: Teaching Responsibility and Lifelong Learn-
ing,” Chem. Eng. Ed., 30(1), 70 (1996)
Craig Travis, Ugochi Umelo, Jennie Wheeler, and Clayton 7. Turton, R., R.C. Bailie, W.B. Whiting, and J.A. Shaeiwitz, Analysis,
Williams. Synthesis, and Design of Chemical Processes, 2nd Ed., Chapter 24,
The following students worked on ice cream production: Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, NJ (2003)
8. Oldshue, J., Fluid Mixing Technology, Chapter 15, McGraw Hill, New
Jess Arcure, Jon Baldwin, Benjamin Banks, Adam Byrd, York (1983)
Timothy Daniel, Mariana Esquibel, Kyle Gallo, Lina Galvis, 9. Kydonieus, A.F., and B. Berner, Transdermal Delivery of Drugs, Vol-
Joseph Jones, Matthew Kayatin, Dennis Lebec, Daniel ume II, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL (1987)
Malone, Jonathan Miller, Joshua Mounts, David Newcomer, 10. OrthoEvra® Full Prescribing Information, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceu-
ticals, Raritan, NJ (May 2003)
Rebecca Orr, Coleen Pell, Michael Pfund, James Rhoades, 11. <http://www.che.cemr.wvu.edu/ugrad/outcomes/>
Joshua Rhodes, Rebecca Seibert, James Sims, Michael Velez, 12. Hubbe, M.A., and O.J. Rojas, “The Paradox of Papermaking,” Chem.
William White, Jason Williams, and Joanne Winter. Eng. Ed., 39(2), 146 (2005) ❐

TABLE 3
Assessment Results for Design Projects

Assessment Patch Ice Cream

Design of equipment, understand interrelationship between equipment in process 3.0 3.0
Apply chemistry, math, physics, engineering science 3.5 3.5
Resolve complex problem into components 3.0 3.5
Apply economic, physical constraints, and optimization methods to obtain solution 3.0 3.0
Use of computer-based and other information systems 3.0 3.0
Demonstrate ability to learn new material not taught in class 4.0 4.0
Demonstrate ability to function in assigned role 3.0 3.0
Demonstration of ethical behavior 3.0 3.0
Demonstrate understanding of societal impact and need for assigned design 3.0 3.0

TABLE 4
Student Evaluation of Instruction Results

Result Group Out of

Asked 5.0
Tackling the nontraditional problem posed in the large-group project enhanced my confidence in solving new problems. Patch 4.90
I feel that my experience with the group design taught me the importance of and the need for continuously learning new material. Patch 4.17
In my career, I will be required to solve problems appearing to be outside the mainstream of chemical engineering, Ice cream 4.17
such as food processing.
I feel confident that I can apply my chemical engineering knowledge to any application. Ice cream 4.40
The teamwork experience in this class will be valuable in my future career. Ice cream 4.57

Spring 2006 95