SOLIDS PROCESSING COURSE

George G. Chase, The University of Akron, Akron, Ohio 44325-3906, tel 330-972-7943, fax 330-972-5856, email gchase@uakron.edu.

PURPOSE: To provide students with an overview and general understanding of operations involved in solids handling and processing.

DESCRIPTION: Companies such as DuPont and DOW Chemical Company have thousands of major unit operations involving particulates. Each operation requires engineers and technicians who understand the relevant areas of particle technology. The probability is high that newly hired chemical engineers will be assigned to operations involving particulate solids.

Only a limited number of engineering programs in the United States provide courses on solids handling and processing. At The University of Akron we developed a course titled Solids Processing using instructors from academia (the author) and from industry (Karl Jacob, solids processing engineer at the DOW Chemical Company in Midland, MI). To make this course possible, the National Science Foundation provided travel funds through their GOALI program.

The course provides a broad overview of solids handling and separations used in industry from both a theoretical and a practical design perspective. A list of topics and subtopics are shown in Table 1. Initially the course mechanics included lectures, a hands-on design project, a plant design exercise, and a tour of the DOW facility at Midland. Recent revisions have added some laboratory experiments.

TABLE 1: List of topics in the course.