Specialized Resources
One of the biggest assets to the department is its 25-foot-tall distillation column, located in the high-bay area of Bevill. One of only a few of its kind, this $105,000 glass tower was donated by alumnus Ralph Lewis, Vice President of Sales of Texaco, and the Texaco Corporation. Students are given first-hand experience with its controls, design, and operation. In the 1,200-square-foot high-bay area reside fume hoods, a gas chromatograph, reaction vessels, a computer-controlled batch still interfaced to a Camile data acquisition and control system, and a steady-state glass still. Students spend a good portion of their summer Operations Laboratory performing experiments with the aforementioned equipment.
The Lewis/Texaco Distillation Column: Bottom Section, With Controls. High-Bay Unit Operations Laboratory, Tom Bevill Building.
Synthesis routes involve Al and Mn precursors in a solvent with the presence of surfactant using Na as the reducing agent. The precursors are 0.5 mmols Al(acac)3 and 0.5 mmols Mn(acac)2. These precursors are placed in a three necked round bottom flask where the solvent is 20 ml trioctylamine and the surfactant is 0.25 ml trioctylphosphine. The reducing agent is Na. The particles as made were superparamagnetic and the TEM image shows the particle size around 5 nm. After annealing at 900°C the particles exhibit ferromagnetic properties as indicated by the hysteresis loop. The loop is not fully saturated at a field of 19 kOe, but it does show that the particles have a high coercivity of approximately 5 kOe. Work is in progress to fully characterize these particles and optimize the synthesis and annealing procedures to produce the next generation particle for tape and other forms of data storage. Funded by: Information Storage Industry Consortium (INSIC).
The unit operations laboratories housed in H. M. Comer contain a three-and-one-half-story double-effect long-tube vertical evaporator, two packed towers, dryer, membrane separation unit, pipe-flow test loop, and a pneumatic solids transportation system. The lab is also equipped with a wide variety of heat exchangers and filter presses that the students pipe up and operate. The shop contains all the piping, fittings and tools needed to assemble fairly complex flow systems.
The Chemical and Biological Engineering Department uses a considerable amount of advanced teaching technology. Room A23 Bevill is equipped with a ceiling-mounted multimedia projector that is connected to VCR and a computer, enabling the class to view software demonstrations or watch a video at any time. In Room A21 there is a portable unit similar to the one in A23.
The Bevill Building houses two computer labs and one multimedia/computer-equipped classroom for chemical and biological engineering students. Room A128 is a computer lab containing 10 internet-connected machines dedicated solely to the department's undergraduates, and a second computer lab located in Rooms 143/144 also containing ten online computers is shared with metallurgical engineering. Software found on the computers in both of these labs includes: ChemCAD, MatLab, Visual Basic, Fluent, Office 2000 and AutoCAD 2000. The computers in each lab are networked to a laser-jet printer, with an A-sized plotter available in A128 Bevill. There is also a library of various chemical engineering publications in the latter room that students frequently utilize. If necessary, students can also access the university's library system online. The lab located in Room 143/144 is maintained by the College of Engineering; the chemical and biological engineering undergraduate computer lab (A128) is staffed by student workers who have advanced knowledge of computer equipment. A multimedia classroom located in 162 Bevill contains an additional ten online computers together with video projection equipment enabling class instructors to integrate video or internet materials and software into their classes.
The department's students also have access to numerous personal computers located in four other engineering computer labs that are provided and maintained by the College. These labs, located in other engineering buildings, are networked together and are designated exclusively for engineering students.