Week 1

Overview of the module

In class, we have learnt what it means to be a chemical engineer.

There are two different perspectives to being a chemical engineer:

1. Traditional View

-Chemical engineering is the discipline that combines sciences, mathematics and engineering principles to transform laboratory-scale ideas into large-scale production realities using inherently safe and cost-effective process designs and technologies. 

2. Expanded view

-Chemical engineering is not only involved in product designs of large-scale productions but is also involved in product designs of a wide range of products.

ICPD uses the renowned "CDIO" education framework. It's a worldwide engineering framework that teaches engineering students how to conceive, design, implement and operate complex value-added engineering systems in a modern team-based engineering environment to create systems and products. Thus, the acronym, CDIO.

Chemical Product V.S. Chemical Product Design?

Chemical Product:

A chemical product can be anything that has been made or designed with the means of chemical engineering calculations or principles.

Chemical engineering principles include: Fluid flow, Heat transfer, Mass transfer, Thermodynamics & many more!

There are also different categories of chemical products:

1. Commodities🌾

    • Made in large quantities

    • Sold at lowest possible price

    •Traditional focus of chemical engineering

    • Made through reaction engineering and unit operations

2. Chemical devices📠

    • Miniature processes which accomplish a particular chemical transformation

    • Provides convenience

3. Molecular products💊

    • Possess specific chemical structure

    • Discovered through research

4. Micro-structured products🎨

    • Products with specific functions

Chemical Product Design:

Therefore, chemical product design is the process of designing and developing chemical products. (thanks Captain Obvious)

Anyways, remember the CDIO education framework mentioned earlier? In chemical product design, this framework is followed as such:

Conceive - Formulate a problem statement that seeks to address an issue. Then, ideate to come up with possible solutions to the problem

Design - Focus on creating designs in the forms of specifications, drawings or sketches

Implement - Transform the designs into products for (small-scale) pilot testing

Operate -  Translate the products into larger-scale production 

AND/OR

Use the products to deliver their intended values

The journey of product design starts from conceptualisation, ideation, then analysis and lastly, prototyping and testing. Even though we have been taught that research is conducted between the conceptualisation and ideation phase, our group believes that research should be done through every stage as new proburtunities may arise during different phases of product design.

Tuckman's 5 different phases of a team

1. FORMING:

Every individual is unique in their own ways, be it their strengths or weaknesses. When our team was formed, we barely knew one another, through mini conversations and small talks, we casually eased up and became a notch more comfortable with one another. We value each other as we are a team and we should be open to each other's views.

2. STORMING:

As we start our team activity, we may still feel detached from the group. It is absolutely normal for each of us to feel that way since we just got to know one another. The more we talked the more we know. We share our feelings and opinions, though we may have a different perspective we try our best to accept the other party's. We may even tend to take a step back until we feel comfortable getting back out there. Takes time to get comfortable with everyone :)

3. NORMING:

After we learn about our team members thoughts, we ponder and realise that our weaknesses maybe our team member's strengths. How we can work together and help ourselves grow as an individual and a group. It's a win-win! 

4. PERFORMING:

After realising that we can cover each other's back due to our differing strengths, we trust each other to make use of these strengths to complete the task at hand as a group. Like the human body, every part works together - though they have different functions - to keep the human body alive.

5. ADJOURNING:

At this stage, we assess ourselves and plan to transition into different roles to gain a greater level of confidence when working with the group. We also celebrate our accomplishments and recognize other members' contributions.

Creating a blog

Creating a blog is a form of documentation. Documentation is very important because many changes are inevitable, especially since product design isn't a direct "Point A to Point B" activity. In order to track changes and avoid confusion, documentation is conducted.

Dr Noel's tip: Detailed recording (aka documentation) of the workflow of tasks also serves as a good "instructional manual" to refer to when the task needs to be repeated after a lapse of time.

A blog is also an informal way to share information such as research, ideas and thoughts.

 Therefore, as authors of this blog, it is our duty to constantly update this blog so that the authors, readers of this blog will benefit greatly from our content.

Reflection about documentation and what chemical engineering is about

Derrick: In my very own opinion, I think that it is important to document, especially for chemical product design, as it is a great way to look back and recall the techniques used in designing a chemical product, so that you can quickly apply it again whenever conducting chemical product design. As a former DNT student, I have learnt different ways to document things. For example, the expected amount of time to complete certain tasks and the actual amount of time consumed to complete those certain tasks, also known as the Gannt Chart.

To me, chemical engineering is a discipline that consists of many principles and is very diverse when it comes to the number of industries it could be applied in. The simple concept about chemical engineering of scaling-up an idea/product is something prevalent in many industries. For example, the invention of vaccines by laboraties run by scientists which are then mass produced by chemical plants run by chemical engineers. From our first year of our Chemical Engineering Diploma, I realised that as chemical engineers, we are also responsible for the continuous production of products we use on a daily basis. This means that we need a high level of risk assessment and troubleshooting in order to ensure that processes that happen in a chemical plant run SMOOTHLY and SAFELY because safety should be everyone's number 1 priority. It truly is a versatile discipline.

Dorson: At the start of this module, I didn't like it very much. The moment I heard that we need to document whatever we've done in class it sounded too much of a hassle. When documenting this week's blog, I realised that only those information fresh in my memory could be recalled and documented, those that I couldn't recall, I had to fish some information out from blackboard. This made me realise the importance of documenting, we cannot remember everything we do in class or at home. It's only been less than a few weeks and I've already forgotten, I need to document things so that whatever that I learnt or made mistake and corrected is readily available when I need them. Documenting my experience also serves as an reflection and consolidation of my memory. To me this is a new thing and something chemical engineers should be comfortable with, we are constantly trying to improve plant designs etc but we should keep ourselves in place by documenting as well. Chemical Engineer to me isn't all about process operations but creating new ideas to improve plant processes. In fact we chemical engineer are trained to adapt to any environment. Chemical engineer is something that is versatile and able to work in many industries. Not forgetting the business world as well. 

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