Reflection | sallahuddin's Profile

Principle of chemical Process I is the course that introduce students to the chemical engineering profession and the basic of chemical process equipment. This course also equips students with the basic principle of chemical engineering material balances and also calculation techniques to solve material balance problems for chemical process system and equipment.

                This course was handled by Associate Dr. Aznizam Abu Bakar. At the first week of this course, he explains roughly about this course. At my first sight, I think that this subject is difficult to be learnt. But doctor using their skills to explain to the students in order to get our understanding.  Roughly, there are three type of learning approach that he use which is face-to-face learning, Self-directed learning and also formal assessment. In order to enhance the understanding about this subject, homework and quizzes will be given to the students to be solved in the class. After lecturer teaching the sub topic of the subject or the outcomes for every week, lecturer will give quizzes to assess the achievement of the students, whereas the tests are to evaluate their attainment of the intended course outcome in term of the technical skill.

                Firstly, the lecturer emphasize us to study the subject carefully because it is important for us to extract important information’s in order to do solve the problem. The lecturer also gives me advices to get excellent result although sometimes he got angry with me because of the previous test. Mostly, my friends and I do silly mistakes; therefore the marks will be deducted. Each and every class, he will give advice to not do silly mistakes and also must be carefully interprets the data from the questions. Before making any decision to solve the problem, students also should make some draft to what steps that they should take off. This will make us more understand what really the question wants.

This course covers up till chapter 1 of energy balances. From that, first part of this subject in this semester mostly exposes students to the fundamentals of material balances such as the conversion units, process and process variables, balances for single unit and multiple units’ processes. The most important outcomes that students get are the steps for calculation and drawing of the flow diagram for problem that involve recycle, bypass and purging. Students also should be able to explain the purpose of what they using to solve the problem such as what is the purpose of a recycling stream, a bypass stream and a purge system. This will needs skills to solve the problem, therefore Dr. Aznizam approach their students to use a simpler method but will solve the problem effectively.

From the course outline given to the students, mostly the learning outcomes have archieve the target. Firstly, the students have been teaching to carry out unit conversion and equipment identification. This is very important in this subject because students exposes to the basic method of calculation to the advance calculation. My lecturer also teach their students in how to calculate the mass balance on single and multiple process units with or without recycle, purge, or bypass streams for reactive processes and also non-reactive processes.

From week 1 to week 5, I was exposed to the fundamental of material balances. After that, test one which cover up throughout with this topic was conducted. Actually, mostly the question given was moderately easy, but the silly mistakes make me lost too many marks. I was shocked because the simple question make my test one averagely at the good level not at the excellent level. But I was Thankful and I have to perform better for the next test. The next lecturer touches on the process and process variables on material balances on reactive process this include on how to balances on single and multiple unit process with recycle and bypass. Lecturer also tech us that the reactive processes is not same as non-reactive processes. In order to calculate the reactive process, some steps must be does such as the chemical equation and the stoichiometry, this is important for the next calculation. There are three methods in balancing which is using atomic, molecular and extend of reaction of reaction approach. At the 8^th week of the lecturing, test 2 was conducted; this covers up to only reactive balances. I think the question given in the test quite difficult to solve because some of the question is tricky to solve. Other than that, actually I was doing last minutes study, therefore test 2 result not very good for me. Same as other my friends mostly could not answer the question better because of the last minutes studies. This wills not affluent me to not study hard, and I hope for the last test I will perform better and gain more marks. The last test covers some of the reactive balances and the single phase system and also multiple-phase system. I think that test 3 I do better and hope that this will help me gain more marks. Thanks very much to the Dr. Aznizam that helps my friends and me to study this subject for the whole semester. Alhamdulillah.