Subject: Re: Ch.E for non majors
From: jaspevacek@mmm.com (John Spevacek)
Date: 14 Nov 1996 15:57:17 GMT
ileslie@nmsu.edu wrote:
>Can anyone recommend a book that presents chemical engineering
>for non chemical enginners. The audience would most likely be other types of engineers or technology oriented people.
>
Based on my experience with chemists, the areas that I would recommend
learning about are fluid mechanics and heat transfer. Bird, Stewart and
Lightfoot's "Transport Phenomena" is the classic text in the area. I'm
pretty sure it's out of print, but any university library would surely
have multiple copies. Be sure to look for the secret message in the
epilogue! (Hint, the profs are big Badger football fans!).
The problem I have with this recommendation is that you may get too hung
up on the details and miss the big picture. For instance, in attempting
to heat/cool something, chemist tend to increase/decrease the temperature
rather than attempting to change the speed of the cooling fluid.
Convection is better than conduction at heat transfer, but I'm not sure
that this will be learned in the recommended text. Worse, I don't know of
any place else to recommend!
John
Subject: Re: Chemical Engineers and Computer Science
From: William Docter
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 13:42:05 -0500
Karl F. Roenigk wrote:
> =
> Greg Trollope wrote:
> >
> > You 'll find a very powerful tool in that one can write macros for Ex=
cel
> > in VisualBasic: the spreadsheet does the input and summary output, th=
e
> > macros do the work, and the graphing capability displays the results,=
> > even as the calculations proceed....
> =
> Visual Basic in MS=AE Excel would be the first language I would recomme=
nd
> to any ChemE who wants to develop practical programming skills. It is
> considerably more intuitive than FORTRAN, the old workhorse of science.=
I would suggest that the ChE that wants to learn programming ought to
start with FORTRAN or C despite the argument to the contrary given
above. If you want a more intuitive language than that, learn Matlab.
First, as you point out FORTRAN is the old workhorse of science. As
such, a lot of general purpose science and engineering subroutines have
already been coded in it (IMSL, NAG, etc...). Since C and C++ are more
prevalent in the software development industry, many of the old FORTRAN
routines have since been translated to C and/or C++. I would not
encourage ChE to use BASIC, PASCAL, or any other so called "easy" or
"intuitive" language as they would end up having to translate these well
established FORTRAN and C libraries. This type of translation would
require a knowledge of FORTRAN and C, thus the user would have to learn
them anyway. It would be less time consuming to learn C or FORTRAN in
the first place.
Second, many commercial pieces of software have external interfaces that
support user written programs. Almost all of these external interfaces
accept either C or Fortran or both (examples: Matlab, Simulink,
Speedup,...). To my knowledge, none support BASIC.
Third, FORTRAN and C are well standardized and exist on all Platforms
(DOS, MAC, UXIX). Computational programs written in Fortran on a PC can
easily be ported to a Workstation. Most problems that occur in porting
programs is caused by overuse of high performance graphics modes that
tend to be machine specific. BASIC has hardly any standardization and
is nonexistent in the workstation environment. Older versions of BASIC
do not even support structured programming (subroutines, functions,
=2E..). As far as VisualBasic itself is concerned, it is targeted at onl=
y
a single operating system (in this context I do not not consider Win95
and WinNT to be different).
And last, most ChE textbooks that deal with computational issues, give
examples of code in FORTRAN. One particularly good example is "Process
Modeling, Simulation and Control for Chemical Engineers" by William L.
Luyben which is used widely in undergraduate controls courses.
IMHO, I think that FORTRAN and C are the only way to go in ChE. I think
you would find that to be the overwhelming concensus among ChE faculty
and ChE's that work in software and simulation development.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
William Docter
Chemical Process Modeling and Control Research Center
Lehigh University Department of Chemical Engineering
http://www.lehigh.edu/wad2/public/www-data/wad2.html
Subject: Re: Q. Industrial preparation method of Triethylaluminium.
From: thweatt@prairie.nodak.edu (Superdave the Wonderchemist)
Date: 14 Nov 1996 16:51:17 GMT
bodie@worldaccess.nl wrote:
: Hello,
: For one of my school assignments I would like to get help on the following
: matter:
: Industrial preparation method of Triethylaluminium
: Relevant reaction equation
: Applications of the product
: Scale of production of the product, worldwide and per production plant
: Process flow sheet
: Process description
: Available literature
: Many Thanks,
: Judith van Heteren
Judith, according to Elschenbroich and Salzer, _Organometallics_, 2nd
edition, Verllagsgesellscaft mbH, Weinheim, Germany, 1992, pp. 75-76
there are several industrial processes for making triethylaluminum.
Here's one:
Al + 1.5 H2 + 3 CH2C(CH3)2 (isobutene) ---(1OO deg. C., 200 bar press.)--
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------
|
|
--> triisobutylaluminum + CH2CH2 (ethylene)
|
|
-------------------------
|
|
--> triethylaluminum + isobutene
triethylaluminum = (CH3CH2)3Al, but it is a dimer in solution as well as
in the solid form. A bottle of triethyl aluminum should NEVER be opened
in the presence of oxygen or water. It must be handled under nitrogen!
If you expose it to the air, it instantly lights on fire in a very
impressive manner. The journals: _Organometallics_, _Inorganic
Chemistry_, and the new journal _Journal of Main Group Chemistry_ should
be a good place to start, _Organometallics_ has tons of stuff on
organoaluminum chemistry and is an excellent cure for insomnia as well!!!
-Superdave The Wonderchemist
Subject: Re: help with science fair
From: charliew@hal-pc.org (charliew)
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 96 23:05:16 GMT
In article <3289B22C.69AB@cse.uta.edu>, Jeff
wrote:
>charliew wrote:
>>
>> In article <32815f1f.3160726@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
>> mangoman@hotmail.com () wrote:
>[good stuff deleted]
>
>I really think the previous suggestion is very good.
Thanks. As I stated in my original post, I actually judged
a student's project in which she had done this exact thing.
As I recall, she was an 8th grader, and her project looked
much better than most, both in concept and results.
>
>In addition to what charliew wrote, let me add a few
>more 2 cents to make it even more attractive.
>
>Say you would be using a color film of ISO 100
>(processing black and white is more expensive
>nowaday.) The camera lens is at 28 mm to 35 mm.
>Find the best looking sence in town 15-20 minutes
>after sunset.
>
>You could first try using F-stop at B (which is for
>a long exposure) with the apture at 2 or less than 3.5
>for 4 seconds. Then take another one with apture at 16
>or 32 for 8 seconds. The result from a 16 or 32 will
>have extra soft fussing of light surrounding the light
>source and creating a nice soft looking picutre.
>
>If the background had traffic, it will be even more
>beautiful as streams of lights lay across the picture.
>
>Good luck on it; it requires trail and error.
>Don't forget your tripoid, too.
>
>Back to my data net exam study. :(
Subject: Re: Latent Heat Storage for Automotive Use
From: csnyder@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca (Clarence Snyder)
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 00:51:35 GMT
Rikard GEBART wrote:
>T. Trautwein wrote:
>>
>> I'm wondering if anybody knows of a company which manufactures latent heat
>> storage devices for automotive use. It would be used to heat up the engine's
>> coolant when you start a cold engine. Wear, fuel consumption and emissions would
>> be reduced and the car would heat up faster in winter. I believe Volvo has it in
>> some models which are sold in the Scandinavian countries. If you don't know of a
>> company, maybe you can provide some information, since I might build one myself.
>> The main questions are what liquid would be suitable to be used in a heat
>> exchanger and how would you initiate the crystallisation?
>>
>> Thanks for any useful information,
>>
>> Frank
>
>I do not think Volvo has such a system, at least not for commercial use. The common
>method of heating cars in Scandinavia is a resistive heater that is mounted
>in the water volume of the engine block. Normally one of the "frost plugs" is removed
>and the resistive heater is installed in the hole.
>
>Tha main manufacturer of automotive heating appliances is Kalix AB, Sweden.
>
>I remember reading in a Swedish newspaper many years ago of a system for houses where a salt
>was used to absorb heat from the indoor air during the (warm) day. This was accomplished
>by melting of the salt (phase change). During the night when the temperature decreased
>the salt solidified and released its heat again to the indoor air, thereby saving some
>energy for heating. I have not heard anything recently about this system so I assume
>that it is not competitive to ordinary heat exchangers and similar systems which are
>widely used in Sweden. It is possible that the same system could be used for engine
>heating. The newspaper article probably mentioned what salt they used but I have no clue.
>Its melting point has to be somewhere close to room temperature (20 degree C). Maybe a
>chemist can tell you which salt would be suitable.
>
>Finally, if you just want to have something for your own car you should definitely buy
>existing equipment and not build something yourself. If you buy it in Europe the cost
>of a complete solution with engine and passenger compartment heating and a timer would
>probably be less than the cost of the parts only for something you build yourself (not
>mentioning that the reliability and safety would be much higher).
>If, on the other hand, you want to invent something new you may have a pretty interesting
>idea....
>
>Cheers,
>Rikard Gebart
If you routinely have to leave a vehicle where electricity is not
available, a standard block heater is of absolutely no use. Propane
units are available(and expensive). We put an RV water heater in the
bunk of my brother's Kenworth, along with a water pump to circulate
the coolant. Kept the bunk warm on stop-overs (without running the
deisel) and also heated the engine for cold starts quickly.
The Latent heat idea would work well if econamically done.
*************Clarence L. Snyder************
Class "A" Interprovincial Licenced Mechanic
Computer Solution Provider
Waterloo, Ontario
Subject: Re: Chemical Engineers and Computer Science
From: "B{)"
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 03:55:53 -0600
William Docter wrote:
[good stuff deleted]
Suddenly, I wonder why would any ChE person needed
a computer solution? My preception is that some
of the ChE problems need iterative calculation. Doing
it using computer would save ones time. Secondly,
computer solution would be easy to provide an estimation
on a process or a project for a plant which might
not be feasible for building a pilot plant on every
idea.
As for which computer language to use for implementation,
it is a matter of "convinence" to me. (To a large corporation,
it might be a lot to consider, since software maintaince
is about 10% of the cost on a peice of software.) IMHO,
computer language is not necessary the key for any ChE success.
BASIC, Pascal, FORTRAN, C, Lisp, and Smalltalk can
provide solution to the iterative calcuation. If one
liked, Java can be used. (I would stay off from it for
a while, however. :)
The reason I named a (not so programming) software last
time is because it is simple to use. Reusing the "code"
is a matter of tracing throught the _math. notation_(for
most of the time). On the other hand, suppose a 1000
lines of 3th generation program is used for reactor
sizing and new method is needed, who would like to
spend time on redoing them? It is certainly not
a weekend I like to spend. :)
Why not I make an example here. :) About 2 yrs ago, folks
liked to set up a homepage would need to memorize the
codes for HTML. Nowaday, one could use point and click
software for creating one. Decades ago, people used
01 for programming. Later, Assembly was introduced
to alivate the time consumming coding. C from A
evolved to C++. All this is done with purpose, one of
it is to make coding simplier. If a ChE wanted to solve
their science problem, would it not nice to have point
and click tool to solve it by laying out the math. on
a while background screen? Or is it better to write
3th generation programming code?
Frankly, 4th generation programming language is already
out there. If one still like to do things like how
it was done, one is welcome to it. One might have to
face the problem is ... lossing the competitive edge.
As a side note, I remember Luyben 2nd ed. still. Much
of the homework problem I did was solved by using M*thC*d.
0 of the F77 was used.
Subject: Re: Chemical Engineers and Computer Science
From: kfroenigk@mmm.com (Karl F. Roenigk)
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 07:09:45 -0600
William Docter wrote:
>
> I would suggest that the ChE that wants to learn programming ought to
> start with FORTRAN or C despite the argument to the contrary given
> above. If you want a more intuitive language than that, learn Matlab.
>
...
> I would not encourage ChE to use BASIC, PASCAL, or any other so called >"easy" or
> "intuitive" language as they would end up having to translate these well
> established FORTRAN and C libraries. This type of translation would
> require a knowledge of FORTRAN and C, thus the user would have to learn
> them anyway. It would be less time consuming to learn C or FORTRAN in
> the first place.
>
> Second, many commercial pieces of software have external interfaces that
> support user written programs. Almost all of these external interfaces
> accept either C or Fortran or both (examples: Matlab, Simulink,
> Speedup,...). To my knowledge, none support BASIC.
>
> Third, FORTRAN and C are well standardized and exist on all Platforms
> (DOS, MAC, UXIX). Computational programs written in Fortran on a PC can
> easily be ported to a Workstation. Most problems that occur in porting
> programs is caused by overuse of high performance graphics modes that
> tend to be machine specific. BASIC has hardly any standardization and
> is nonexistent in the workstation environment. Older versions of BASIC
> do not even support structured programming (subroutines, functions,
> ...). As far as VisualBasic itself is concerned, it is targeted at only
> a single operating system (in this context I do not not consider Win95
> and WinNT to be different).
>
> And last, most ChE textbooks that deal with computational issues, give
> examples of code in FORTRAN. One particularly good example is "Process
> Modeling, Simulation and Control for Chemical Engineers" by William L.
> Luyben which is used widely in undergraduate controls courses.
>
> IMHO, I think that FORTRAN and C are the only way to go in ChE. I think
> you would find that to be the overwhelming concensus among ChE faculty
> and ChE's that work in software and simulation development.
>
As an undergrad, I learned FORTRAN, and at the U. of Houston, they
taught and incorporated it well into the curriculum. In grad school at
U. of Minnesota, I continued to use FORTRAN, as did most everyone else.
My thesis involved large scale numerical analysis of nonlinear systems
of differential equations describing multicomponent diffusion, reaction
and flow, along with nonlinear parameter estimation of complicated
kinetic forms against large sets of distributed experimental data. We
had the latest and the best technology to do these analyses, a fiber
optic network, sun and apollo workstations from which to debug and
compile, and then port over to the Crays at the supercomputer site.
Access to main frames and the attendant huge self contained IMSL
packages was all very convenient. Forgive the cliche but,... been
there, done that.
Now for the real world. It is submitted that the PC will not diminish
in importance in the future. It is also submitted that most of the
kinds of computational analyses requiring small scale original code
development are best developed for use in a framework like Excel. In
contrast to the academic situation, the overwhelming reality in industry
is not mainframes and IMSL and Unix, etc..., it is instead Macs, PCs,
and Excel. If the high falutant stuff needs to be done, ther are canned
packages that get the job done, one only needs to have some "basic"
programming skills to use any package, FORTRAN source or otherwise. For
the relatively small community of engineers who develop software and
applications professionally, e.g. who develop fluid dynamics and process
simulation code, there is no question that FORTRAN and c++ are
required. Any one, trained in either FORTRAN or Algebra I, can interact
with the packages as they are designed today for user friendliness.
Students should learn what they can make the best use of, and in
industry at present, that language is Visual Basic for Excel. For the
higher order analyses, corporations have special groups set up to assist
in carrying out more complex simulations. It is not necessary or
profitable for every or even most ChemE's to be experts. Even if some
FORTRAN is required to interact with a package, as much as is needed can
be easily learned when needed, but it will mostly, based on the
industrial situation today, be rarely.
This situation is not changing in the future to one where the ChemE will
need to know FORTRAN any more than today; and thus, all the more reason
to reconsider its importance in the curriculum. What is changing
however, is the increasing need for ChemE's to extract from their PCs
the greatest productivity possible for the every day tasks, analyses,
experimental analysis, etc. And to do that, there is no question that
Microsoft Excel is the product of choice for routine numerical tasks,
manipulations, and data collection and analysis. To extract the fluent
usefulness latent in Excel for the more common lesser scale analyses
ChemE's face, one requires a knowledge of Visual Basic.
I resubmit; that Visual Basic is the first language I would suggest any
ChemE to learn.
Subject: The Second Biennial European Coating Symposium
From: jon@icrg.leeds.ac.uk (Jonathan L Summers)
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 19:44:15 +0000 (GMT)
The Second Biennial European Coating Symposium
Euromech Symposium 367
Fluid Mechanics of Coating Processes
22nd - 25th July 1997, Université Louis Pasteur,
Strasbourg, FRANCE.
Background
Interest in Coating Process Fundamentals and their
Applications has risen sharply in recent years. Indeed
fluid film coating is now an established as an
interdisciplinary research areas incorporating
analytical, computational and experimental methods.
The organisers of the Second European Coating Symposium
aim to continue the spirit of the ECS '95 by:
* attracting a healthy balance of academics and
industrialists;
* providing a suitable forum for the presentation and
discussion of recent work and the informal exchange
of ideas;
* including a varied programme of keynote
presentations, papers, sponsored poster session,
social events and a conference dinner.
The Second European Coating Symposium will be held at
the Université Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg (France), in
July 1997.
For more details check out http://icrg.leeds.ac.uk/ECS/
--
Dr. J.L.Summers, Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Leeds, LEEDS LS2 9JT
Tel: +44 (0) 113 233 2151, Fax: +44 (0) 113 242 9925
email: j.l.summers@leeds.ac.uk
