2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper will provide the details our curriculum structure and how we have implemented a hands-on design project in the first CHE Pillar course (the primary design criteria is safety), the structure of the laboratory courses (which provides hands-on laboratory experiences for 300-350 students each semester – for five consecutive semesters), the incorporation of the SAChE training, implementation of safety in various pillar design projects, and the integration of process safety in the final capstone process design course (where students complete process synthesis, equipment design, process optimization, process safety, process economics, and consider the impact of their design solution in global, economic, environmental and social context). The reactive process engineering pillar, provides formal safety content, and students are required to complete a team project, where they research relevant issues of the production of a high-volume chemical product, emphasizing safety considerations. The process control pillar provides more safety content, and students analyze the fatal T2 Laboratory accident from the perspective of process control. Finally, the process design capstone pillar, integrates process safety with process synthesis, equipment design, process optimization, process safety (and risk assessment), process economics and consideration of the impact of a commercial size manufacturing plant design solution in global, economic, environmental, and social contexts – in two distinct locations).

In addition, an overview of the CHE Safety and Ethics course will be provided, in which the students are required to successfully complete ten SAChE modules which complement seven other modules completed in the pillar lab courses, thereby allowing them to complete both the Basic and Intermediate SAChE curricula. Each week, class begins with a “Safety Ten Minute” review of a Chemical Safety Board incident report and video; these fourteen cases cover a wide range of industrial incidents, all of which caused injuries and most resulted in fatalities. With respect to the remaining class time, four major incidents are used to provide a case-study framework for explaining the main concepts of plant health and safety. Finally, student teams are asked to report on the technical, economic, global, environmental, and regulatory aspects of the Deepwater Horizon incident and an oilfield explosion. The groups are also asked to provide design concepts that would minimize the chances of the oilfield explosion from re-occurring.