CHEN30001: Reactor Engineering

Final exam (70%, hurdle requirement), 2 practical reports (7.5% each) and a midsemester test (15%).

As a Chemical Systems major, this is the first of the 4 core subjects that I undertook (along with Heat and Mass Transport Processes this semester). In terms of the subject material, the course goes into entirely new territory compared to what you may have seen in CPA 1, CPA 2 and Transport Processes, however it does draw on the fundamental concepts learnt in CPA 1 and CPA 2 like material balances, energy balances etc. to derive new equations.

Content: Over the first few weeks, you will revisit chemical kinetics (from Chemistry 2, which is absolutely crucial in all following topics essentially), learn about the design equations for ideal batch, mixed flow reactors (MFR's) and plug flow reactors (PFR's) and how to optimise a reactor system for a given final conversion. Depending on how far you get in the course, the midsemester test will certainly cover these concepts. Following this, you will learn about the recycle PFR (design equation, optimum recycle ratio for a given reaction and final conversion), temperature effects on reactor performance (eg. adiabatic operation, optimum temperature progression for a reactor), and finally non-ideal flow systems which brings in a small amount of statistics. The final exam will primarily cover the topics not on the midsemester test, however as the first modules are fundamental to the subject, you should be confident in these topics even for the exam.

Lecturers: Although it is clear that Greg and Judy know this content extremely well, unfortunately they were often difficult to understand and didn't explain some concepts very well. Additionally, Greg can sometimes go on tangents about his research that whilst interesting, can be quite random. However, I would say that they both are fully aware that this is one of the hardest subjects you will have likely taken before and therefore they provide many practice problems in the lecture notes to go through in class which is great (similar to other math subjects you will have done). Furthermore, Greg does bring in guest lecturers from industry (Qenos and Uhde Shedden chemical engineers showed up this semester) to speak about how the content relates to their work which provided some context to the course. It should be noted that the content in the guest speaker lectures are examinable, so pay attention!

Assessment: The practicals were generally very simple to do in class (essentially starting a pump for some sort of chemical, running logging data and then waiting for steady state to be achieved), however the reports are where the difficulty really ramps up from past subjects. The marking for these reports is extremely strict (even down to significant figures and numbering of pages), so you MUST follow the report structure and expectations to a tee. The lecturers and demonstrators really want you to feel like you are writing a professional scientific paper that someone could pick up and still be able to know what is going on, so things like captioning figures, listing tables and providing nomenclature tables is expected. For this reason, the average mark for the first practical report in the class was very low (~62%) as most people didn't know how strict the marking was going to be beforehand. This is one of the few negatives I have about the subject as the class didn't initially know of these expectations, so be very aware of this if you are taking this subject.

As for the midsemester test, this is generally fair and is indicative of the tutorial questions/past midsem tests you will be working through. Note that the last question on the midsemester tests (and exams for that matter) do tend to be very difficult to separate the H1's from H2A's. Past midsemester papers were provided with worked solutions which was very generous of the lecturers.

Finally, the final exam is a hurdle requirement (70% of final mark) and can be real test, especially for the last question which is typically very difficult. There are generally 6 questions on the paper, the first and second often being questions straight from the tutorials just with slight modifications. To do well on the exam you really need to know the content inside and out, being able to go both "forwards" and "backwards" in typical problems. That is why I would absolutely suggest you DO NOT FALL BEHIND ON TUTORIALS. For this subject, the tutorials are actually very useful as the tutors go through the solutions in the tute and explain the method/strategy for tackling the questions. There were 2 tutors taking the class during Semester 1 and both were very good. Additionally, I would suggest that you do go to lectures (don't rely on Lectopia) as the lecturers often write up important notes on the board which are not recorded and the lecturers often had difficulty with using Lectopia correctly (eg. recording the wrong board, no audio etc.).

Recommendation: As this is a core subject for the Chemical Systems major, I'm not entirely sure if anyone would be taking it otherwise however I would say that although the lecturers are less effective compared to other Chem. Eng. lecturers like Shallcross, Dalton and Sandra, the content is very interesting and the types of problems you can do after understanding it can go even beyond what you would typically think of as a "reactor" (eg. if a pollutant spill in a river has occurred, being able to figure out when the concentration of the pollutant will decrease to a safe level).

Yes

Greg Qiao, Judy Lee.

There are several past exam papers available and Greg Qiao (the main lecturer) even provides worked solutions to all given past papers on the LMS which is extremely nice.

4.5 Out of 5

The prescribed textbook for the course is: O. Levenspiel, Chemical Reaction Engineering, 3rd Edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York,1999. However, you will be able to do just fine without it as the lecture notes cover everything you need to know just fine.

3 lectures per week (two 1 hour lectures, one 2 hour lecture), 1 tutorial per week (1 hour), 2 practical classes per semester (3 hours each).

2014, Semester 1.

Not yet received.