06-361
Department of Chemical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University

This is the home page for this course.  Access to most of the links on this page is restricted to Carnegie Mellon users.  Students who wish to use other internet providers should contact the instructor to apply for access.

Most of the documents linked to this home page are in PDF format.  You will need a copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader to read them. To obtain a free copy of the Reader and information about its installation, click here.

General information about the course:

A "unit operation" is one step in a process to convert a raw material into some useful chemical product. It's one of the blackboxes which appeared in process flowsheets first encountered in 06-100, a blockbox which performs some physical (as opposed to chemical) change. In this course, we will learn how to size equipment for heat transfer (shell-and-tube heat exchangers, evaporators), distillation (usually tray towers), gas absorption (usually packed beds), and gas separation in membranes.

• Syllabus for the course
• Course-specific outcome objectives
• Schedule of lectures and homework assignments
• Information about Instructor & Teaching Assistants
• Homework Policy: how to get the most out of the homework experience and what is needed for a good grade on these assignments.

Full text of lectures:

• A complete set of Notes from last year's class, the associated Table of Contents and title page. This version of the notes will remain static during this years class.
• As we proceed through the course, the instructor will revise the lectures. A set of Revised Notes are also available. These revisions will be continually updated lecture-by-lecture.

Homework assignments:

graded: [H1] [H2] [H3] [H4] [H5] [H6] [H7] [H8] [H9] [H10] [Short Project]
not graded: [H11]

Keys to homework assignments:
[Hkey1] [Hkey2] [Hkey3] [Hkey4] [Hkey5] [Hkey6] [Hkey7] [Hkey8] [Hkey9] [Hkey10] [Hkey11]

Old Exams

2001 Exam #1 - grades ranged from 25 to 95 with a mean of 70.3 (link to key)
2000 Exam #1 - grades ranged from 39 to 97 with a mean of 72.6 (link to key)
Review for 2001 Exam #1

2001 Exam #2 - grades ranged from 35 to 94 with a mean of 72.7 (link to key)
2000 Exam #2 - grades ranged from 50 to 100 with a mean of 77.7 (link to key)
Review for 2001 Exam #2

2001 Final Exam - grades ranged from 43 to 100 with a mean of 76.0 (link to key)
2000 Final Exam - grades ranged from 31 to 100 with a mean of 71.4 (link to key)
Review for 2001 Final Exam

Special-purpose documents (for downloading):

Most of these tools are Mathcad documents. Netscape requires special configuration to download Mathcad documents, while Internet Explorer does not. If you experience difficulty downloading the following files using your browser, you can also FTP them directly from the Andrew File Server. The directory associated with our website is /afs/andrew.cmu.edu/course/06/202/www.

• Using units.mcd is a tutorial on how to have Mathcad perform unit conversions automatically. You can specify the value of several variables using whatever units are convenient (even mixing SI and non-SI units), then have Mathcad perform the calculations and display the result using any units you specify. It will also warn you if your units are inconsistent (like adding feet to seconds). If one of Mathcad's built-in units doesn't suit you, you can define your own units. This should be helpful with all homework assignments.
• Steamtab.mcd interpolates the steam tables. You can either specify a temperature and have Mathcad lookup the vapor pressure and enthalpies, or you can specify the pressure and have Mathcad lookup the temperature and enthalpies. In order to use this Mathcad document, you must also download a text file containing the tabular data scanned from the Appendix: Steamtab.prn. This should be particularly helpful with the homework assignments dealing with Evaporation.
• Interpolating.mcd is a tutorial on take tabular data having columns for x and y and generate a function: either y(x) or x(y). These functions (which are a spline fit to the tabular data) can be used in subsequent calculations in the same manner as built-in functions like sin(x) or cos(x). This should be particularly helpful with the homework assignments dealing with vapor-liquid equilibria.
• McCabeThiele.mcd solves a typical distillation problem involving binary mixtures using the McCabe-Thiele graphical technique. The advantage of using this over a hand-drawn graph is that the "line widths" are infinitesimal so that "blow-ups" of the graphs are avoided. McCabeThiele.mcd runs on the standard edition (v6 or higher) of Mathcad (but it requires you to guess the total number of stages and the feed tray), whereas McCabeThielePro.mcd runs on the Professional Edition (v8 or higher) and determines the number of steps automatically, using the optimum feed location.
• CHEMSEP is a DOS program which rigorous solves the coupled algebraic equations associated with distillation. The program is available in the ChemE cluster in A218. There is a help manual which contains technical information about how the program works.

Grades:

Current summary of numerical grades for homework assignments and exams, together with averages, is available in tabular form coded with a PIN number which you will specify on the first exam. Distributions of homework grades, exam grades and overall averages are also available as graphs. Both the table and the graphs are usually updated after each exam.

Letter grades: Your numerical "overall average" x for the course will be converted into a letter grade by the following procedure. First the raw score (0<x<100) is expressed as the number of standard deviations from the mean: X=(x-m)/s, where m is the mean of the x values for the entire class and s is the standard deviation of the x values for the entire class. A preliminary assignment of letters grades is based on the following rules:

For a Gaussian distribution of grades (i.e. a "Bell curve"), these rules will lead to 25% A's, 50% B's, 20% C's and 5% D's or R's. This preliminary assignment of letters grades is indicated on the graph of Overall Averages by the black diamonds (¨ ) labelled by blue letters. These diamonds suggest the dividing lines between A and B, between B and C etc. In reaching the final letter grades, I might move these dividing lines up or down if there is a significant gap in the distribution nearby. The final dividing line is given on this graph by the red vertical bar.

Outside Reading:

• The Reserve Book List consists of books held on reserve at the E&S Library. Some of them are cited as reading for lectures (see Schedule).
• "Effectively Design Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchangers" by Rajiv Mukherjee, Chemical Engineering Progress 94(2), pages 21-37, February, 1998. This article goes into much greater detail than we have time for in the course.
• "Pioneer of Catalytic Cracking: Almer McAfee at Gulf Oil" by Paul T. Buonora, Chemical Heritage Magazine 16(2), pages 6-7, 44-45 (Fall, 1998). An interesting account of early developments in the petroleum industry, traditionally the largest employer of chemical engineers. Gulf Oil Corp. was headquartered here in Pittsburgh until it was taken over by Chevron in the 1980's.
• "Should You Switch to High Capacity Trays" by Andrew W. Sloley, Chemical Engineering Progress 95(1), pages 23-35, January, 1999. A discussion of sieve tray design including innovations in downcomer placement.
• "Succeed at Gas/Liquid Contacting" by Sheng-Yi Lee and Y. Pang Tsui, Chemical Engineering Progress 95(7), pages 23-49, July, 1999. A wide variety of contactors are available. here are factors to consider in selection and scale-up.
• "ACS Salary & Employment Survey" by Michael Heylin, Chemical & Engineering News 77(31), pages 28-39, August 2, 1999.

About the Instructor

Instructor: D.C. Prieve
Email: dcprieve@cmu.edu
DH 3120, phone 268-2247
Office Hours: I have an "open door" policy: if my door is open and I'm not in a meeting with someone else, you are always welcome to come in an ask questions. If the door is closed, that means I'm pre-occupied with something else or someone else and I don't wish to be disturbed. The hour just before class is generally not a good time to stop by, because I'm reviewing my notes for class.

Graders:
Dimitrios Gerogiorgis, Homework assignments #5-#8
DH 3112, phone 268-3039
Office Hours: TBA

Bruno Marques, Homework assignments #1-#4
DH A205, phone 268-3855
Office Hours: Thursdays, 3-4 pm

Homework Policy

There are 10 homework assignments (plus a 2-week project) which are due on Friday of each week in which we do not have an exam scheduled. Assignments will be made at the beginning of class on Friday and will collected the following Friday at the end of lecture (if Friday is a holiday, homework will be collected the following Monday). Late homeworks will not be graded.

Each student is expected to work every assignment independently of other students. In most cases, the full solution will be posted before the assignment is collected. If you get stuck, you can seek help on any problem from this solution, other students, the TA assigned to that homework set, or the instructor; but, in order to learn the material, you should struggle with the problems by yourself before seeking help or looking at the answer. Once you understand how to work the problem, you should also write up the solution in your own words.

To get full credit, homework solutions should be neatly written in a clear narrative form, explaining each step as if you were telling a classmate how to work the problem. Be sure to cite page or equation numbers for any material taken from the textbook or other references. Partial credit for incorrect answers will be given only if your solution is sufficiently clear and complete so that the nature of your error can be easily determined.

Use only one side of 8.5x11 paper; do not use pages torn from spiral-bound notebooks. Your name, course number and date should be printed in the upper right corner of the first page; your name should be printed in the upper right corner of subsequent pages. Pages should be fastened together by a staple in the upper left corner. We cannot be responsible for pages lost when other fasteners are used.

Units should be written next to every number which is not dimensionless, including intermediate results as well as the final answer. When conversion factors are used, units should also be included (e.g. 30.48 cm/ft). Omitting the units from a number is like omitting the exponent from a number written in scientific notation.

When "graphs" or "plots" are requested by a homework problem, they should be either be done by hand on a separate sheet of quality graph paper having at least 10 divisions per inch (or on log-log to semi-log paper, as appropriate), or they can be done by computer. In the latter case, the graph should still occupy a full page. On the other hand, "sketches" may be done on the same pages as the narrative.

Bibliography
The following books are on reserve at the E&S Library

1. C. J. Geankoplis, Transport Processes and Unit Operations, 3rd Ed., PTR Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1993.
2. E.J. Henley and J.D. Seader, Equilibrium-Stage Separation Operations in Chemical Engineering, Wiley, New York, 1981.
3. W.L. McCabe, J.C. Smith, and P. Harriott, Unit Operations of Chemical Engineering, 5th Ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 1993.
4. R.E. Treybal, Mass-Transfer Operations, 2nd Ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 1968.

The National Science Foundation sponsors a number of programs which provide an opportunity to do research during the summer at institutions other than your home institution. These programs are called Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU’s). I have received announcements from the following chemical engineering departments:

• University of South Carolina