The final year design project is the capstone project for most chemical engineering degrees. It gives young engineers an opportunity to put into practice and showcase their individual technical ability and abilities to communicate and co-operate with other engineers to work toward a common goal. Teams will be assigned an academic supervisor to help support the design process.

Design teams of 3 to 4 students will be issued with a design brief to design a chemical plant. They will be expected to meet the specifications required in the brief and address the essential design tasks needed to provide a complete design of the plant. Aspects to be addressed in the design include process selection, flowsheet development, process flow diagrams, mass and energy balances, process simulation, specification of equipment items, safety and environmental assessment, plant layout, and economic evaluation. Individuals will be expected to produce a detailed design of a nominated piece of plant equipment.

Interim reports will be required to help design teams make steady progress and focus their effort during the course. The final design report in an important tangible outcome of the design team’s efforts and should be a comprehensible and coherent work that covers the essential tasks/elements required to meet the design brief. Detailed guidelines for content and structure of the reports will be provided during the course.

The learning outcomes for this paper are linked to Washington Accord graduate attributes WA1-WA11. Explanation of the graduate attributes can be found at: https://www.ieagreements.org/

R. Sinnott & G. Towler, "Chemical Engineering Design" 6th Edition, Elsevier (2019)

R. Smith, "Chemical Process Design and Integration" 2nd Edition, Wiley (2016)