Chemical Engineering exercises?

[TokenMonkey]

I'm a second year Chemical Engineering student, and I can't seem to find decent exercises to supplement my lectures and tutorials. The tutorials have good questions, but I want more. Can anyone recommend any websites or (preferably) exercise books? I'd like something quite challenging, but obviously within my abilities (basic thermodynamics, heat transfer, etc.). Thanks in advance!

[sunspot]

Some good projects are called engineering estimation. I am not sure where you would find them but such projects make you look at the big picture, do some thinking, research, and then help you learn to use a little ingenuity to get reasonable results.

 

For example, how many acres of forest would it take to make a Sunday addition of the New York Times (or other big local paper)? How much wax, that melts at 50C would it take to store solar energy as the heat of fusion (melting) to heat a 2000 ft2 house for two days during the coldest winter day. Want kind of panel design would maximize the heat transfer to the wax seeing wax is a very good insulator?

 

This last one is more complicated than what you may know, but based on what you know, how fast must water flow through a 1 ft2 copper target (1in copper plate sitting on a 1in copper coil) to absorb a full heat blast from a 100 kilowatt lasar without damaging the target. These are all estimation exercises that can get as complicated as you want them to be, yet simple estimation can often get you within 80-90% of the answer.

[TokenMonkey]

Thanks for the reply... I did a search on Google, and all I could find was "Classification, Parameter Estimation and State Estimation: An Engineering Approach Using MATLAB". Could this be what you were referring to? I doubt it, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

 

What you described of the book sounds quite interesting, and if I manage to find out what it's called, I'll definitely give it a shot. However, it seems to me like it's rather general - I was hoping for something more specific.

 

BTW, I do have "Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes" by Felder & Rousseau. It's pretty good, in general, but the questions in it don't require as much thinking as I'm going to encounter in exams, etc.

[Prime-Evil]

Do something practical, like make a small alcohol stove to boil water.

Or make a small still to distill ethanol from beer.

Or just make your own beer.

Or just drink beer.

[sunspot]

Another good source of exercises is to go to the fraternities and ask if you can copy some of their exam file archives. There should have all type of good problems that the professors have come up with over the years, organized to reflect your level of expertise.

[engware]

Hi there:

 

Check out the following web sites:

 

http://www.cheresources.com

http://www.chemicalforums.com

http://members.aol.com/engware/free

 

Thanks,

 

Gordan

[TokenMonkey]

Awesome, thanks Gordan! Those links are awesome. The forum at chemicalforums.com had a post "Good chemical engineering books", and it lists a whole bunch of them, so that's my problem solved! Thanks!

[engware]

Hi there:

 

No problem.

 

I am glad to be of some help.

 

Thanks,

 

Gordan