Department of Chemical
Engineering

Professor Alan L. Graham, Chairperson.

Emeritus Professors Bethea and Heichelheim; Professors Mann, McKenna, Parker, Riggs, and Tock; Associate Professors Abbott, Desrosiers, Hoo, and Simon; Assistant Professors Leggoe and Wiesner; Visiting Professor Krishnan.

This department offers study in the following graduate degree programs: CHEMICAL ENGINEERING, Master of Science in Chemical Engineering and Doctor of Philosophy.

The master's program is a structured program requiring the five core courses denoted below by asterisks. The graduate student will be required to take one additional chemical engineering course and at least two other courses as specified by his or her advisory committee. A written thesis and a minimum of 24 hours of graduate-level course work, exclusive of thesis and seminar, are required for the master's degree. In addition, a final oral exam in defense of the completed thesis will be administered by the candidate's thesis committee.

The master's program may also be completed without a thesis. Entry into the nonthesis option must be approved by the departmental graduate committee. This program is intended for graduate students in the college-sponsored International Exchange program and for new students with more than five years industrial experience. Graduate students in this nonthesis option are required to take 36 credit hours of graduate course work, exclusive of seminars. The course work for each student must meet the approval of the department's graduate committee.

In addition to regulations established by the Graduate School, applicants for candidacy for the doctor's degree are required to demonstrate high proficiency in a single research area. Certification of the research proficiency will be based on a record of accomplished research which demonstrates the required level of competence in the research area. The record must be substantiated by published articles, final research reports, or papers presented at meetings of learned societies.

All master's students are required to register for CH E 5121, and all doctoral candidates are required to register for CH E 7121, each long semester unless exempted by the chairperson. Seminar courses do not count toward fulfilling credit hour requirements for the master's and doctoral programs.

Courses in Chemical Engineering. (CHE)

5121. Graduate Seminar (1:1:0). Discussions of chemical engineering research and its relationship to the philosophy and art of chemical engineering. Required of all chemical engineering graduate students. May be repeated for credit.

*5310. Advanced Chemical Engineering Techniques (3:3:0). Application of ordinary and partial differential equations for solution of mass, momentum, and/or energy transfer and transport problems. Primary emphasis is on the mathematical analysis of unsteady state systems and chemical-reaction systems: models, solutions, and model validation.

*5312. Fluid Transport Principles and Analysis (3:3:0). Fundamental relations governing mass, momentum, and energy transfer within fluids, with special emphasis on simultaneous transport, process applications, and numerical methods of analysis.

5314. Process Dynamics and Automatic Control (3:3:0). Study of the transient behavior of process systems: methods of analysis; synthesis and simulation of digital control systems; introduction to process model-based control, optimization, and statistical process control.

5315. Advanced Process Control (3:3:0). Prerequisite: CH E 5310, 5314, and 5323. Analysis methods, control principles, and synthesis of control strategies for Laplace-, sampled data-, time series-, and nonlinear-model based controllers.

*5321. Advanced Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics (3:3:0). In-depth study of fundamental laws of thermodynamics, property relations for pure material and mixtures, and phase and chemical equilibrium principles.

*5323. Digital Computation for Chemical Engineers (3:3:0). The development of current numerical methods for application to modeling of chemical engineering systems. Primary emphasis is placed upon steady state and unsteady state chemical reaction systems.

5331. Special Problems in Chemical Engineering (3). Prerequisite: Approval of department chairperson. Individual study of topics of current interest under the guidance of a member of the staff. May be repeated for credit on different topics.

5342. Polymer Science and Processing (3:3:0). Polymer solution properties, chain conformation and molecular weight characterization and viscoelastic response. Crystalline polymers and morphology. Polymer deformation and yield. Blends and composite.

*5343. Reaction Kinetics (3:3:0). Analysis and design of chemical reactor operations with multiple reactions; semibatch operations and other complex reactor configurations. Determination of kinetic parameters from operating data. Economic-based optimization, characterization and modeling of non-ideal reactors

5351. Chemical Engineering Design (3:2:3). Procedures for design of new chemical processes based on research data and theory are taught. Flowsheets for these new plants are synthesized, optimized, and cost estimated. Commercial chemical process similators are used in these investigations. The ability of these possible new processes and products to compete with existing products is considered.

5360. Advanced Industrial Waste Treatment (3:3:0). Advanced methods for treating industrial wastes and remediating previously contaminated sites are of increasing importance to industry and to society. This course will detail the ways to evaluate the many proposed treatment methods. They will be evaluated in terms of science, engineering science, operability, costs, and credentials of the developer. Actual proposed processes will be used as examples.

5375. Chemical Process Safety (3:3:0). Fundamentals of chemical process safety and applications, risk assessment methods, accident causes, spills and toxicologic and environmental implications, dispersion modeling and relief-sizing principles.

6000. Master's Thesis (V1-12).

7000. Research (V1-12).

7121. Doctoral Seminar (1). Open discussions of recent advanced findings in any field of endeavor, with special attention to their relationship to the philosophy of chemical engineering. May be repeated for credit.

8000. Doctor's Dissertation (V1-12).


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LAST UPDATE: 11-22-99