Chemical Engineers - current students thread

When are you starting your course? Are you excited?������

I start on October 4th so a couple of weeks yet. Can't wait, it's going to be awesome! Right now I still have some of the maths they sent us for preparation to complete. What about you?

Do you travel much to client sites? And how much do you interface with other disciplines?

ChemEng is blowing my mind.

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Could you please talk about how you're finding the course, its difficult, what you're learning about, what previous topics you had already learnt about in 6th you are finding helpful etc.? I've applied for ChemEng so I'm very curious

No problem!

I'll start by saying that I didn't do A levels. I did an FSMQ in year 11, which covered some of the AS maths syllabus, namely C1, C2, and D1. I then did half of a (mainly chemistry) degree before transferring to chemical engineering. However, I did study C1-4, M1-2, and FP1, plus some of FP2, before I started.

Edit: I averaged 96.6 % in my maths module but it still took a while to get to grips with solving some of the differential equations. Hope that gives some context.

The course isn't too bad. The effort required depends on the student, as does the time necessary to complete the work. I found that whilst previous maths study was helpful, I was dealing with more variables and so things got more confusing at times. And the basic equations you derive in C4 do not prepare you for energy balances, for example.

I guess what I'm saying is that a lot of the course doesn't really hinge on prior knowledge; you pick up what you need to know. My personal experience was that I would bang my head against a wall for two days, only for there to be a simple solution, assumption I didn't think of, or concept I hadn't applied correctly.

I am hoping to blog about some chemical engineering topics in the near future, perhaps introducing some concepts and the like. So feel free to ask more questions and I will use them as a basis for something more detailed. Maybe an introductory course for prospective students?

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Thanks for your post! I'm doing IB HL Mathematics which should give me a solid foundation then.

The blog sounds like a great idea, as does the introductory course! Definitely up for that

No problem - slowly adding to my blog so feel free to check it out. Soon I will start covering some useful derivations which you will need to know (or at least understand).

https://adamparr.wordpress.com/ right? Will check it out

Correct. Give it a few weeks though, I have an exam first. Hopefully I can get some proper stuff on there in the lull between the two semesters (before thermo starts ).

Good luck with your exams! My friend in Australia says there is so much thermo, have fun with that

I've had a quick read through the 3 most recent ones, and they're quite helpful. Thankfully I'm already encouraged to think like a scientist, with assumptions etc. from my current course. I'm a bit more interested in content though - what were the first few things you learnt about? How useful is dimensional analysis in ChemEng?

Yes, lots of thermo. I've done some preliminary reading so I should be okay.

Glad you found them helpful. A few are half-written and will appear shortly, and the maths-heavy ones will be pdf downloads.

The first things were fluid statics/Archimedes principle, manometers, hydrometers, and conduction. Dimensional analysis is hugely important and can pretty much be applied to any situation. Basically if you are scaling up a process all you need to do is ensure that the key dimensionless quantities are the same and there should be no issues. It's a powerful tool. In fact, I'll add that to the list of things to cover.

4th Chemical Engineering student checking in.

I've applied this year as well, please tel me it is only 35% physics ?????? less is more

Hmmmm....I would say 60% maths, 30% physics, 10% chemistry.

QFA

How often do you use coding? I'm learning MATLAB in preparation... is there anything else I can do in the meantime to make sure I hit the ground running?