CHEMICAL ENGINEERING UNIT OPERATIONS LABORATORY UPGRADES

Abstract

This two-fold project was centered around the improvement of the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering’s undergraduate lab space. The main focus of the project was to design, build, and test a hydraulics friction loss experiment for senior environmental engineering students. The lab will help students to understand pressure losses in a common industrial pipe system by running tests on three 16-foot sections of pipe of different materials and sizes, as well as a fittings board with an elbows line, a valve line, and a cavitation line (illustrating the brief vaporization of liquid in a pipe). Additionally, a flow visualization section will allow students to gather qualitative data on how different flow regimes act in pipes. The second part of the project was to research and design a new cold-water system for the undergraduate lab space. The current system needs to be replaced so a lift can be installed down to the basement area. The goal was to create a tankless system with three plate and frame heat exchangers running in parallel to provide cooling duty to three experiments. A process flow diagram of the process was created, and the sizes of the heat exchangers were found using ASPEN.