(106e) Preparing Chemical Engineering Students for the Digitalization of Tomorrow – Integrating Modelling across the Curriculum

The advent of increased computational power, availability of more data and improved algorithms is allowing industry to “digitalize” operations. In essence, this means industry is able to use models to represent the plant accurately, use large amounts of data to determine the state of the plant, and use algorithms to optimize the plant performance on-the-fly. To prepare students for such a working environment, it is important to train students in the fundamentals of modelling. At present, modelling often does not go much beyond a flowsheeting exercise, which provides little understanding of the fundamentals underlying a model, and often has become a simple enter-data-and-push-button exercise. Modelling plays an important underlying role in almost all chemical engineering areas, from reaction engineering, physical transport phenomena to thermodynamics and of course process systems engineering, because the core laws, and chemical and physical phenomena, are expressed in equations. Introducing modelling as an integral part of a curriculum is therefore not only logic, but crucial in order to prepare students for the industry of tomorrow.

The Department of Chemical Engineering at University College London has successfully implemented an Integrated Engineering Program (IEP) where modelling is integrated across the entire curriculum, rather than being covered in a single course in the junior or senior year. To support the integration, PSE has developed and provided training material, exercises and tests through the Process systems engineering Academic Teaching Highway (PATH) initiative. The material is modular in nature and covers the typical fundamental topics from a modelling perspective and are supplementary to existing course material. We will reflect on the implementation and delivery of the new curriculum over the past four years, and how the PATH material has supported the students' learning, ultimately preparing them for a digital future.