Circular Process Design and Control

Volledige vakbeschrijving

This course follows up on the core course in Chemical Engineering as well as the previous concentration courses in Reactor Engineering, Chemical Separations and Unit Operation Skills. Combining all knowledge, insights and experiences, you are required to address sustainability issues of existing reactor design and the accompanying industrial challenges in upgrading/updating existing production plants. To this end, you are provided with relevant background information on state-of- the-art reactor design and process intensification technology, based upon which you could select an approach for your assignment. Subsequently, teams of students perform a technical and economic evaluation for a real-life application, such as the production of biofuel from algae on the Brightlands Chemelot Campus and blend in sustainability and/or circularity requirements. You set up design criteria, use ASPEN software for the calculation of the relevant separation techniques and the corresponding energy and mass balances and diverge to find optimal settings of the process by calculating different scenarios. You evaluate your work and discuss weaknesses and strengths of your approach.