Handbook

Chemical, chemical product, biomedical and food engineers design processes where fluids or particulate materials are transported at scale. Such processes range from artificial hearts to pump blood around the human body, to industrial processes that mix large amounts of flour, sugar, and butter to make delicious biscuits, to water treatment systems that ensure households have access to clean drinking water. It is only by knowing how fluids and particles behave that an engineer will be able to create and manage systems that efficiently and cost-effectively carry out these tasks.

This course teaches the science and technology related to the handling and processing of fluids and particulate materials at scale. You will learn how we describe the behaviour of different fluids and particles in terms of their properties (e.g., rheology), and then how they transmit pressure and flow (fluid statics and dynamics). Then applying this knowledge, you will learn how we handle fluids in process systems (using pipes and pumps), and how we can model their motion (e.g., differential and dimensional analysis). Finally, you will return to the study of particulate systems to learn how they are described and processed, including key unit operations like classification, mixing, segregation and communition.