Developing Safety Culture in an Undergraduate Chemical Process Safety Course

PresentationIn order to better prepare students for industry and to provide them with an appreciation of the importance of a dedicated safety culture, the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engi- neering at the University of Iowa has been offering a required junior-level chemical process safety course since 1996. A major laboratory component was added to this course in 1998 to provide students with hands-on experiences to emphasize concepts learned in the lecture compo- nent of the course, particularly flammability, runaway reactions, electrostatics, explosions and relief sizing. Beyond these and other fundamentals, the course emphasizes accident prevention, inherently safety design strategies, HAZOP analysis, layer of protection analysis, and related topics. A significant portion of the lectures involve the discussion of previous accidents and how they could have been prevented through the application of techniques learned in class. Students completing this course have an appreciation of industrial hazards and how to utilize engineering principles and management techniques to minimize risk

Mentoring Program

The Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at the University of Iowa initiated a mentorship program during the 2012-13 academic year. This program involves pairing professional chemical engineers with a minimum of 5 years post-BS experience with chemical engineering sophomores. The resulting mentor-mentee relationships are intended to continue through graduation. The intent of this program is for the mentors to contribute to the professional preparation of the students for a successful career by interactively supplementing the students’ formal education with the mentor’s knowledge, experience, and counsel. This includes individualized help with career planning, resume preparation, interviewing savvy, internships, networking opportunities, lasting relationships and more. The development and implementation of this mentorship program will be discussed. Furthermore, the program’s strengths and weaknesses will be reviewed

Thoughts About Meeting the ABET Safety Requirements For Chemical Engineering Programs

Safety was first listed as a criterion for Chemical Engineering programs for the 2012-13 ABET accreditation cycle. In order to address this criterion, chemical engineering departments have been developing methods to incorporate safety into their program. The University of Iowa satisfies this criterion through a required junior-level chemical process safety course that was first offered during the Spring 1996 semester. A major laboratory component was added to this course in 1998 to provide students with numerous hands on experiences. While a dedicated chemical process safety course is the most straightforward method of addressing this ABET criterion, the criterion can also be addressed by incorporating safety into existing courses

Semiclassical Propagation Method for Tunneling Ionization

We apply the semiclassical propagation technique to tunneling ionization in atomic and molecular systems. Semiclassical wave functions and the tunneling flux are calculated from the solution of the classical equations of motion in the complex time plane. We illustrate this method by rederiving the known result for the decay rate of a negative ion in a weak electric field. We then obtain numerical results for atomic hydrogen, H2+, H2, and Ar, and compare them with the results of the asymptotic [Ammosov-Delone-Krainov (ADK)] theory. The asymptotic theory gives surprisingly good results for the atomic and molecular ionization rates. In particular, our calculations for the simplest case of molecular suppression, ionization of H2 versus Ar, confirms the ADK analysis of Tong et al. [Phys. Rev. A 66, 013409 (2002)], explaining that the suppression is mainly due to the different symmetries of the ionized orbitals, s in H2 and 3pz in Ar

Effect of Sample Complexity on Quantification of Analytes in Aqueous Samples by Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

This study was undertaken to quantitate the impact of increasing sample complexity on near-infrared spectroscopic (NIRS) measurements of small molecules in aqueous solutions with varying numbers of components. Samples with 2, 6, or 10 varying components were investigated. Within the 10-component samples, three analytes were quantified with errors below 6% and seven of the analytes were quantified with errors below 10%. An increase in the number of varying components can substantially increase the error associated with measurement. A comparison of measurement errors across sample sets, as gauged by the standard error of prediction (SEP), reveals that an increase in the number of varying components from 2 to 6 increases the SEP by approximately 50%. An increase from 2 to 10 varying components increases the SEP by approximately 340%. While there appear to be no substantial correlations between the presence of a specific analyte and the errors associated with quantification of another analyte, several analytes do display a small degree of sensitivity to varying concentrations of certain background components. The analysis also demonstrates that calibrations containing an overestimation of the numbers of varying components can substantially increase measurement errors and so calibrations must be constructed with an accurate understanding of the number of varying components that are likely to be encountered

Matrix-Enhanced Calibration Procedure for Multivariate Calibration Models with Near-Infrared Spectra

A novel method is introduced for developing calibration models for the spectroscopic measurement of chemical concentrations in an aqueous environment. To demonstrate this matrix-enhanced calibration procedure, we developed calibration models to quantitate glucose and glutamine concentrations in an insect cell culture medium that is a complex mixture of more than 20 components, with three components that manifest significant concentration changes. Accurate calibration models were generated for glucose and glutamine by using a calibration data set composed of 60 samples containing the analytes dissolved in an aqueous buffer along with as few as two samples of the analytes dissolved in culture medium. Standard errors of prediction were 1.0 mM for glucose and 0.35 mM for glutamine. The matrix-enhanced method was also applied to culture medium samples collected during the course of a second bioreactor run. Addition of three culture medium samples to a buffer calibration reduced glucose prediction errors from 3.8 mM to 1.0 mM; addition of two culture medium samples reduced glutamine prediction errors from 1.6 mM to 0.76 mM. Results from this study suggest that spectroscopic calibration models can be developed from a relatively simple set of samples provided that some account for variations in the sample matrix

Zusammenhänge der frontalen Aktivierungssymmetrien und der kognitiven verbalen und figuralen Leistung unter Berücksichtigung von Emotionen : eine EEG-Studie

Daniela MurhammerZsfassung engl. SpracheGraz, Univ., Dipl.-Arb., 2009(VLID)20632