2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

BYOE: Hands-on Experiments for Teaching Process Safety: Exploring Dust Explosions

Presented at ELOS Technical Session 5: BYOE (Bring Your Own Experiment): Innovative Tools and Techniques for Experiential Engineering Education

Process safety is a critical component of an undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum and is increasingly recognized as a key competency in the hiring process. Teaching of process safety is often limited to the classroom as there are few hands-on educational tools for instructing students on the practical aspects of safety. In this paper we describe the design and development of a hands-on process safety experiment for a Chemical Engineering Unit Operations Laboratory that is used to assess the explosion risk posed by dust. We constructed a custom Hartman Tube, a device commonly used in industry for explosion risk analysis, at a fraction of the commercial cost–under $1,000 compared to the typical $30,000–using 3D printing and affordable pressure monitoring components. Protocols were established for dust sample preparation, including considerations for particle size and moisture content, as well as standardized testing and data collection procedures. We demonstrate how the device can be used to collect quantitative explosivity data and observational data helping students understand how factors such as humidity and material type can influence a combustion event.

Authors

Dr. George Prpich http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2697-2276 University of Virginia [biography]

Professional Skills and Safety are my main pedagogical interests. I use the Chemical Engineering laboratory to implement safety training to improve safety culture, and to adapt assessment methods to enhance development of students’ professional skills. I am an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Virginia and I hold a B.Sc. (University of Saskatchewan) and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering (Queen’s University). Complimenting my pedagogical research is an interest in bioprocess engineering, environmental engineering, environmental risk management, and I have authored >40 peer reviewed publications in these fields. I’m also active in developing workforce development initiatives, specifically within the biopharmaceutical manufacturing space. Beyond academia, I have 7+ years of international consulting experience working with the U.K. government, European Union, and the United Nations.
Amara L Pettit University of Virginia
Clare Cocker University of Virginia

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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