To address a declining interest in process engineering, a project to design and build a compact heat exchanger was initiated in the second year of a four-year, multidisciplinary degree programme in biotechnology. The heat exchangers had a double-pipe configuration and employed plastic outer pipes and copper inner pipes of various diameters. Designs produced ranged from coiled inner pipes to various multi-pass arrangements and were assessed on the basis of heat transfer achieved per unit mean temperature difference per unit cost. The project, which also formed the basis of a competition, was very well received by students and gave them hands-on experience of engineering design and construction, as well as team work, problem solving, engineering drawing and the use of simple tools. Based on the success of this project, a similar problem based learning approach will be initiated in the third year of the same degree programme and will focus on bioethanol production.