Insights shared by Udom Philemon, a graduate of chemical engineering (2020 set) to 500l students.

“I want to talk about project and design with respect to my experience. In the first semester, students are grouped and they get to know their group members, leaders and supervisors etc. They start looking for topics or are given topics. This topic would be worked on till defense. I would be speaking on how to get the project done without having any issues."

Udom Philemon

Udom Philemon is a Chemical Engineering graduate of FUTO who has interests in process design and process optimization. He's an open minded person who believes anything is achievable through diligence and hardwork.

Phone number: +234 706 613 4201

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Firstly I would like to talk about things that are very important for one to have in final year

• God

You know one always needs God and final year is just an aspect of

one’s life when one needs God as well.

• Motivation:

This is the last lap and the last chance to correct the mistake of the five years, so you need to be motivated. Motivation needs to be at its peak at this point because any mistake could lead to an extra year. No one should push you, you need to push yourself.

• Money:

You need a lot of money, like a lot it (laughs). The money I spent during my final year, I can use it to start a business.

• Time management:

This is because you have to read as a student, then you have project and design. So you have added two other things to the workload, you already have as a student. So if you were managing your time well as a student previously, you have to do more of that now. You also have to do things on time to avoid being overwhelmed. You have to prioritize as well to know which need is pressing and which to attend to first.

• Device/System:

This is because you will do a lot of work on your computer .One should endeavor to get one even if it means borrowing, renting etc. There are some software/packages that should be installed on the system that would help in both design and project:

1. Microsoft word

2. Microsoft excel

3. Microsoft PowerPoint, though our department does not use slides but things could change and it could be a requirement for presentation at some point.

4. Microsoft visio for plant design, process flow diagram, P & ID

5. MATLAB: It could be used in design for material balance, split fraction. Depending on your research process route you could need MATLAB as well.

Note: You can contact him to get Design-Expert and Matlab.

Other software packages that might be necessary are Aspen hysys and Hysys fluent for computational dynamics.

• You need to study, for your normal schoolwork and then for your research work

• Rest as much as time would permit, to avoid a break down.

Undergraduate Research

Kidding!! Chill!!

• Getting a topic: Sometimes it could be very easy, you could get into a group where the lecturer gives the students topic or you could be in a group where you would have to search for topics. There are scenarios where students present a topic and it is rejected and the cycle continues which could lead to late commencement of project work that would result to insufficient time to work on the project.

How to look for a project topic?

• Area of interest: As a chemical engineering student, you could have an area of chemical engineering that you are interested in and you could look into choosing a topic in that area. This would serve as a boost to your interest in your project as you would enjoy what you are doing.

• Problem in your working environment (local environment): You could identify a problem in your community that you could use your chemical engineering knowledge to solve. This could serve as your project topic.

• SIWES experience: There could have been a process that you observed at your work place that caught your interest and is chemical engineering related, you could use that as a project topic.

• The internet: There are some websites that group project topics according to one’s department. You could select chemical engineering and you can even get a template on the project but that could be a paid feature.

How to get a novel project topic.

Personally, I don’t feel there is a project that no one has worked on before but there are things that you can do to an existing project topic to make it seem novel.

• Look at the recommendation section of an existing project work: When a researcher writes a report on their project they usually give out recommendations for future work, perhaps on something different that they would have loved to try out. One can take up this recommendation and get a novel project idea.

• Change the operating conditions of an existing project: One could alter the process parameters of an already existing project. For example, I was supposed to work on a corrosion project initially. The researchers who initially worked on that particular project used room temperature for their experimental runs, my supervisor suggested I make use of 80-100 degrees Celsius in order for us to see the effect it would have the project as a whole. In summary, process parameters such as temperature, pressure, time, volume, concentration, etc. of older projects could be changed to make them look new. There has to be sensible reasons for making these changes and it would be ideal if the reasons are related to the optimization of the process.

• Change the materials used in an existing project: The materials used in an existing project could also be changed. These materials include raw materials (process feed), inhibitors, adsorbents, chemicals, catalysts, etc.

I started my research quite late and this was because my initial topic was changed due to cost implications, though I was able to scale through in the end. I and three others worked on the treatment of textile wastewater using activated carbon obtained from velvet tarmarind adsorbent, it wasn’t easy for us but with the right attitude as well as with teamwork we were able to make the most out of the situation. Making use of velvet tarmarind as well as varying 4 process parameters (temperature, contact time, agitation speed and adsorbent dosage) were a few of the factors that made our work quite different from already existing literature. The Design Expert software was responsible for the design of our experiment and through it we are able to vary the four process parameters, we had 30 batch runs in total. I recommend the software (Design Expert) for projects that involve quite a number of process variables, it is also very good for optimization.

Though we worked on a topic that had alterations from the norm, already existing literature served as a basis for what we eventually did.

After choosing a project topic, what next?

Research

Carry out a lot of research, some supervisors ask students to source for up to twenty journals related to their research topic (this is done primarily to make students well grounded in their research area). You need to have a firm grasp of your topic, you need to know what has been done already with respect to your topic and from there you could define specifically what you want to do (achieve). You need to read a lot concerning your topic.

Understand your supervisor.

You need to understand your supervisor, as this would play a role in how your project would go (from start to finish). Supervisors are different. Some want to know all about your project some don’t. Supervisors easily approve projects related to their areas of interest. Lastly, try as much as possible to develop a personal relationship with your supervisor. As much as possible, always obey your supervisor’s instructions. Most supervisors do not really like talking about a particular issue more than once (after the first time, it may not really be funny the next time they’d talk about it), so be very sensitive whenever they are trying point things out (listen, accept corrections and effect changes). Some address issues plainly, others do subtly and this is part of the reasons why you should try to understand them.

If you feel there’s something your supervisor is asking you to do that won’t be favorable and you think there are better options, your manner of approach in bringing up the issue would go a long in determining if it would finally end in your favor (most of the time, your supervisor won’t listen to you if he/she perceives you as stubborn). Lastly, do not miss group meetings with your supervisor (for both design and project) as most of them don’t take it lightly.

Generally, I would advise that students get their project done by themselves. Some students because of their workload in school outsource their work to people to get it done but doing your project yourself would help you learn how to use software packages, build hard and soft skills. Most of the software packages that I know how to use, I learnt while doing my project. It also affords you the chance to work on a real life project, you might not get the opportunity to do that again. Furthermore, some people you give your project to might not do the work well. Giving your work out would also mean you would have to read it well so that others would believe you did it.

How to Source for Information.

Generally you could use Google to search online for resources, Google Scholar could help more when it comes to downloading journals. Popular sites that could provide a lot of journals include; Sciencedirect.com, Springer, Academia.edu, Researchgate, etc. With the aid of (Sci-hub.se), you could download journals that are supposed to be paid for or that require an institution to be accessed for free. All you need to do find a way of getting the journal’s (DOI) mostly from the site where you found the journal, then paste it in Sci Hub (Sci-hub.se) and click open afterwards (contact me for more clarification). You could also get resources from the Chemical Engineering Library (possesses project and design reports of previous years; you could get lucky and find past works related to your topic) as well as the FUTO Library depending on what you are looking for.

For researching with respect to your topic you could either use the whole phrase (the full title of the topic) or you could break the topic down and search based on the keys words in the topic.

Plagiarism.

For plagiarism, the percentage limit is 30% as anything above that is not acceptable. Though the plagiarism test would only be done on project reports, design reports won’t be tested. Generally in order to keep your plagiarism percentage low, you could do the following:

· Properly rephrase information gotten from resources used. These resources include websites, journals, articles, pdfs, books, etc. Information gotten from them should as much as possible be written in your understanding (this would be easy if you possess the attitude of reading and digesting information before writing/typing).

· Proper in-text citation and referencing of sources. Citation and referencing is required when the information you are adding to your work isn’t coming from you (i.e you got it from a particular source e.g a journal; you are expected to cite and reference the original owners of the information). It is important to note that each in-text citation must have a corresponding reference.

You could reach out to me for further explanations on citation and referencing formats.

Applications you may need for report writing.

· Grammarly: This can help detect errors relating to the structure of your sentences.

· Article Spinner: This application could help you with rephrasing sentences, for those that may have challenges with rephrasing. There are other rephrasing apps you could check online as well. When using this app, it is important to compare both the original sentence and the rephrased sentence to ensure that they portray almost the same meaning.

For me the best way to rephrase is to read, understand and write in your own understanding.

About Project defense.

During my time about one hundred and fifty-nine of us defended our project in one day so we spent very little time in the defense hall. Basically, if you were involved in every aspect of your project, defending it won’t be a problem.

About Seminar.

It’s usually chapter one and chapter two of your project topic or you might be asked to select a new topic depending on your supervisor.

Publishing a project

If the quality of your work is good your supervisor can push to get it published. Individually you can pool together money and get it published.

Plant Design

This is theoretical design of a plant. Plant design is quite bulky, each group member would be assigned a portion of the work. An average plant design has 200 pages or so. It consists of 9 chapters.

It could be approached in two ways:

- One person could do the whole work and then explain to others but others pay the person that did the work. It could be quite draining on the one person but it worked in our set because of the covid-19 break so a lot of people did most if not all their work during that time

- Each person is given a chapter to work on. This is highly recommended due to the short time frame of this current session.

PLANT DESIGN CHAPTERS

• Chapter One (Introduction)

• Chapter Two (Literature review)

• Chapter Three (Material and energy balance)

• Chapter Four (Process and instrumentation drawing)

• Chapter Five (Equipment specification))

• Chapter Six (Health and safety)

• Chapter Seven (Costing)

• Chapter Eight (Plant startup and shutdown)

• Chapter Nine (Conclusion and recommendation)

Group members research on their apportioned chapter, work on it and later explain to the whole group. Any aspect of the design a particular group does not have an idea of could be given to someone (third party) to do based on agreed terms and conditions (but whatever was done must be properly explained to the whole group on the long run), that particular group could check what other groups are doing or have done on that particular aspect. Success in design would basically be achieved through team work.

About Plant Design Defense.

This is like the regular SIWES defense (based on its setting) and this is because the department handles it entirely and that’s one of the reasons it may be quite intense. As earlier stated, if you are actively involved in the whole process you might not need to prepare so much for it as you’d already know what you did.

During my time we were asked questions in two phases. In the first phase, the first person to talk is the group leader, then from the group leader to the last person in the group according to how the names are arranged. Anyone can be stopped at any point in the presentation and the next person would pick up from where the previous person stopped. This is one of the reasons why everyone in the group should have an idea of each part of the design work.

In the second phase, you would be asked to talk about what you did. For example, I worked on material and energy balance, I was asked questions on material and energy balance only.

In my group, the first person a question was thrown at was my group leader. The group leader has a lot of work to do (from the beginning up on till the defense day) also how he/she starts up or presents the project(design) on defense day would have an effect on the groups outcome.

Plant startup

My group leader worked on startup. She was asked, ‘How do you plan to start up the plant assuming it is already in existence’.

Funny enough, I do not know the answer to this question although I have asked one or two persons that question, I would send the answer across when I get it. Meanwhile, she was able to answer the question to the best of her knowledge.

Material balance

I was the second person and I worked on material and energy balance.

Material balance has two methods; Arithmetic method and the Sequential based approach though processes with recycle streams could be resolved using the Split fraction method (highly recommended for processes with recycle streams). It is advisable to explain to the lecturers the reason why you used the method you employed in the material balance. A couple of lecturers fancy the split-fraction method because of its accuracy and the fact that it most of the time requires the use of MATLAB, but you could use arithmetic method and you could state that your reason for using it is because the process route does not possess a lot of units. If your process has a lot of units then you should use sequential modular or split fraction. A lecturer asked me a question about the arithmetic method that I could not answer, he asked which of the methods is more advantageous, starting from the first unit of the process or last unit to compute material balance but I was saved by a lecturer who asked them to just move on with the defense since I had already detailed how I worked on the chapter.

For energy balance, just give a summary of how the calculations were done as well as the assumptions you made

Process Equipment Design and Specification

It is important to know the difference between design and specification as well as proprietary and non-proprietary equipment. My team member who worked on this was asked what equipment she designed, the shape of the tank which was a cone. She was then asked the volume of the cone (it is therefore important to remember most of the formulas employed in the calculations of this chapter).

This part has a lot of calculations, like designing the heat exchangers in this chapter is crazy.

If you are the one that did it yourself, you would obviously remember a lot of the calculations but if given out you may want to read everything.

Safety

We (my group) made a slight mistake in this aspect of our plant design and this affected the person worked on this part. We made use of bleaching earth and we did not take into consideration the recycling of bleaching earth as it is recoverable. The team member in charge of this part was asked about the plan and unit that would recover the bleaching earth, our process did not cover that. It is important to note that if you are using bleaching earth, catalysts, etc (materials that are recoverable) you must factor in a unit that can regenerate such into the process route. In summary, do research about the materials involved in the process, try to identify materials that can be reused, if the process byproducts may be useful in the process or in other processes, etc as questions could arise from these.

It is also important to speak on what you know only (so that when questions are asked you’d be able to answer). For instance, one of the byproducts of our process is carotene, so a team member was speaking on safety and mentioned that carotene is flammable. So the lecturer asked him what the flash point of carotene is and he was unable to answer and the lecturer made a remark saying, you said carotene is flammable but you do not know its flash point.

Note: You defend as a group but you are graded individually though the design report is graded generally because it is just one report. Ability to answer questions was 45 marks in our time.

Costing/Economic Analysis (Evaluation)

There are some values one should memorize payback period, ROI, etc. and the formulas as well. My team member that worked on this was asked what break even was and he could answer that. He had the highest mark in our group. You should know the meaning of some of those key terms as well, payback period, break even, rate of return, etc

Plant Shutdown

The team member that worked on this part was asked the same question the group leader was asked but rephrased to relate to plant shutdown instead of start up.

P and ID

My group wasn’t asked any question on P and ID though I think stating the control equipment used at each unit, the reason behind choosing them and stating the process variable(s) they are monitoring using the P and ID should suffice. It is important to note that P and ID is somewhat related to safety (chapter 6) in that control equipment apart from monitoring process variables also help in ensuring that things don’t go out of hand in the plant. Examples of control equipment that also spur safety include control valves, relief valves, etc. In a way, the person working on Safety (Chapter 6)may also want to look into the P and ID as they are quite related.

Lastly, one thing that would go a long way in design is setting up group meetings periodically so that the progress of the group can be discussed and chapters already completed can be properly explained, this is to ensure that everyone in the group is on the same page.

I hope I have been of little help with the above points of mine, you could reach out to me if you have questions as regards design, project. I wish you all good success in this final lap, I’m confident that by God’s grace you all would do great and do better than us.