A project and competition to design and build a simple heat exchanger
Freeland, BrianORCID: 0000-0003-3705-5745, Tobin, John M. and Foley, GregORCID: 0000-0002-2284-4218
(2007)
A project and competition to design and build a simple heat exchanger.
In: International Symposium for Engineering Education, ISEE-07, 17-19 September 2007, Dublin City University.
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.