Course syllabus for Advanced chemical engineering and process analytical technology

The course is adapted to chemical engineering students, and basic chemical engineering and transport phenomena knowledge will be assumed. Some topics treated in preceding courses will appear, but will not be treated as extensively in this course.

The aim of this advanced course is to deepen and extend knowledge of a group of operations where transport phenomena are the basis for design. Some operations of importance for environmental work will be treated. The emerging field of process analytical technology (PAT) is introduced.

• explain basic principles of mixing, crystallization, process analytical technology, drying and absorption
• ability to select appropriate techniques for the processes above
• formulate and solve problems related to the processes above

This course consists of five parts: Absorption, Drying, Crystallisation, Mixing (multi-phase and non-Newtonian) and Process analytical technology. In absorption a gas mixture is contacted with a liquid to selectively dissolve one or more components by mass transfer from the gas to the liquid. Absorption is used to separate gas mixtures; remove impurities, contaminants, pollutants, or catalyst poisons from a gas; or recover valuable chemicals. Drying is one of the most common operations in process industries and can be found in almost all branches. In some cases, drying is an essential part of the manufacturing process, for example in paper making, though, in the majority of processing industries drying is carried out for one or more of the following reasons: reduce transport cost; to improve storage performance; increase the effective heat value (e.g. biofuel); make material more suitable for handling or provide definite properties. Crystallisation is an important operation in processing as a method of both purification and of providing crystalline materials in a desired size range. It has a wide range of applications in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Mixing is one of the most common operations carried out in the processing industries. It may be of interest simply as a means of achieving a desired degree of homogeneity, but generally to promote heat and mass transfer often combined with chemical reaction. In general, mixing operations involve several phases: solid/liquid, gas/liquid, liquid/liquid etc. and complications arise in the case of highly viscous Newtonian and non-Newtonian liquids. Process Analytical Technology (PAT) embrace novel analytical technology for design, analysis and control of manufacturing processes based on timely measurements during processing, conducted in an integrated system approach. PAT can be described as an emerging revolution of the chemical process industries. Quality control in real-time will reduce long production cycles, improve quality consistency, improve manufacturing efficiency and also enable a smarter development and scale-up of new products.

The course contains lectures, exercises, project and laboratory work.