2025 AIChE Annual Meeting

(209c) Integrating Modeling into Chemical Engineering Unit Operations Lab through Industry Collaborations

Authors

Aycan Hacioglu, Mathworks
Michela Cavalieri, Northeastern University
Rudolf Abdelmessih, Northeastern University
Meng-Hsien Tsai, Northeastern University
Mehdi Vahab, MathWorks
Mae Markowski, MathWorks
Neha Sardesai, MathWorks
Noah Roberts, MathWorks
Andrew Greff, MathWorks
The unit operations course is at the heart of the undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum. Students apply their theoretical knowledge of mass and energy balances, reaction kinetics, transport phenomena, and separation processes. They learn about laboratory safety, gain communication and data analysis skills, and work in teams. At Northeastern University, the Chemical Engineering Unit Operations course emphasizes hands-on learning with experiments involving heat exchangers, fluid mechanics, and separations processes. Still, students graduate and enter careers in industries that, increasingly more often, rely on modeling and simulations to inform design decisions, optimize process variables, and improve outcomes. In this work, we demonstrate how we integrate modeling applications to complement the experiments in our Unit Operations Laboratory.

We collaborated with MathWorks engineers to equip graduate student teaching assistants with knowledge of MATLAB, Simulink, Simscape Fluids, App Designer, Partial Differential Equation Toolbox, and Data Acquisition Toolbox using self-paced online training courses and examples to get started with these computational tools. Graduate students developed data acquisition applications for heat exchanger and fluid mechanics experiments. They also created process models, and simulated textbook examples related to fundamental concepts. By doing so, we have a collection of approachable, pre-built applications and models for undergraduate students to ease into programming and data visualization that complement the experimental work students are already conducting in the Unit Operations Laboratory Course.

As a result of collaborations with MathWorks, students are exposed to tools used in the industry. Through regular meetings with MathWorks engineers, graduate student teaching assistants gained experience in communicating scientific thoughts and challenges to industry professionals, received feedback, and incorporated suggestions while sharpening their programming and modeling skills. In this talk, we will showcase the developed products, and our future modeling and collaboration plans to support the teaching & learning laboratories.