Handbook

A key competency of chemical engineers and chemical product engineers is to apply fundamental thermodynamic principles to the design of unit operations for various separation processes. While the type of unit operation may vary significantly from multi-component distillation to liquid-liquid extraction, the fundamental thermodynamic principles remain and can be applied to a range of separation processes.

In this course, you will learn to apply concepts in thermodynamics and fundamental knowledge of transport phenomena to develop models for industrial separation operations. This will be studied in conjunction with thermodynamics of phase equilibria for multi-component systems. The modelling will include graphical, shortcut, and rigorous models for stagewise operations. Separation operations examined include liquid-liquid extraction, binary and multicomponent distillation, azeotropic, extractive and reactive distillation; solid-liquid extraction and absorption.

In addition to the technical understanding of these processes, you will learn how to synthesise separation sequences to improve process efficiency. This is foundational to the role of the chemical engineer, who must also consider the commercial aspects of process operations.