REFLECTION : PRINCIPLES OF CHEMICAL PROCESSES

ASSALAMUALAIKUM..

HYE EVERYBODY

Principle of Chemical Processes (PCP) is a core subject for chemical engineering students. Meaning that, the subject is quite important for me as well since I am also a part of chemical engineering student. My seniors also agreed that this subject is very tough. Therefore, they advised me to not take it lightly as it is important for our future career. Because of that, I’ve set in my mind this subject is hard and I need to prepare myself in advanced. In the starting of the course, meaning that my first PCP class our lecturer, Dr Nazlee Faisal introduced the course outline (CO) that give us some ideas on what are we actual study. Throughout the semester we have covered the topics as follow:

1. Unit Conversion

• Our lecturer shows us the conversion calculation of different units. This topic is important since we will use the method for converting units in the following chapter which involved values of different unit. We had learned unit conversion during our
  first semester in Introduction to Engineering subject but we do not apply it in solving problems.

2. Mass Balance

• There are many types of system involving mass balance such as mixture, splitter, and distillation. By using different techniques for each question, we learnt to analysed and calculate the input and output of the process. The methods involve in analysing and calculating are sketching the flow diagram, stoichiometry coefficient,
  extent of reaction, atomic balancing, molecule balancing and many more. We must
  define the system whether it is a single or multiple unit, reactive or non-reactive and batch or semi-batch. In my opinion, the difficult part is we failed to understand the concept of the question thus we make mistake during data analysis.

3. Single Phase and Multiphase

• In this topic, we learnt about properties of three different phases which is gas, liquid and solid. The topic covered ideal gas law, ideal gas mixture, standard temperature and pressure, real gas equation. Real gas equation includes virial equation, Van
  der Waals equation, Suave-Redlich equation and compressibility factor. For multiphase, we use Antoine equation, Gibbs Phase Rule to solve the problem given. Our lecturer shows us how to use the table given in the textbook in solving the questions.

4. Energy Balance

• This is the last topic that we learnt in this subject for this semester. The first law of thermodynamics states that, Inlet Energy = Outlet Energy. In energy balance, we covered two systems that is opened and closed system. We must know the process that takes part in the system. The concept is just the same like mass balance topic that we must understand the flow and able to analysed the data given to solve the
  questions. Students usually make mistakes during analysing data because they
  find it difficult to understand the question and what the question want exactly.

In conclusion, we must able to use various techniques that involves in solving the problems in chemical processes. To get a better result, of course we must do plenty exercises for each chapter. The more we do, the more we get. Practice makes perfect.