Course content

The course consists of two parts. One is a project work by groups of 3-4 students per group with the objective to design a chemical or biochemical process concept. The other part is to follow the lectures and exercises of half the course TKP4165 Process design. The latter is a necessary basis for doing the project work. The course will have a focus on the design of sustainable processes for the future, being more efficient with respect to the utilization of energy and material. The course will contain:

• Do an early-stage feasibility study.
• Create and draw process flow diagram of the process concept
• Calculate mass and energy flows of the entire process
• Chose the type of equipment and size unit operations
• Estimate the cost of major equipment
• Estimate the total investment and operating cost
• Do a profitability analysis
• Assessment of environmental impact and safety

Learning outcome

After completing the course, the student will have attained

• Knowledge about biochemical or chemical process technologies
• Apply methods for sizing selected process operations or be able to look-up and apply such methods.
• Estimate cost of equipment based on size or capacity.
• Estimate total investment and operating costs.
• Do a profitability analysis of the project and compare alternative projects

Learning methods and activities

Half of the workload is project work. Groups of 3-4 students are assigned a problem to design a chemical or biochemical process. Several of the scientific personnel from the department of biotechnology and the department of chemical engineering will participate as supervisors. The second half of the work is to follow selected topics from the course TKP4165 process design. The final product of the work is a report that describes the process design and the results of the study. In addition, the results will be presented as a poster or as an oral presentation.

Compulsory assignments

• Compulsory assignments

Specific conditions

Required previous knowledge

TBT4140 Biochemical Engineering, TBT4146 Molecular Genetics and TBT4110 Microbiology (or similar) must be passed and you need to have a general knowledge of process engineering.

Course materials

Sinnott and Towler, Chemical Engineering Design, plus handouts

Credit reductions