New Research Center for Process Analysis and Diagnostics

The Chemical Engineering Department has long taken pride in training our undergraduate students to analyze chemical plants and processes in innovative ways. Our courses emphasize energy management, control strategies, and engineering design practices that lead to more efficient, safer, and more profitable processes. The term "process diagnostics" has been coined at MTU to encompass the critical thinking skills that lead to process improvements.

To make this faculty and student expertise more available to industry and academia, we have established a new Process Analysis and Diagnostic Center. Students often wonder what their professors do when they are not lecturing or holding office hours. In the Center, the experience of seeing how and why facultyindustry collaborations develop, and learning the importance of delivering results to a client, takes students beyond traditional classroom and laboratory training.

Under the Center's auspices, industrial sponsors provide project funding for case studies and specific industrial problems, and suitable teams of students and faculty are assembled with the skill sets to tackle the projects. Past projects of this type have been conducted by faculty in the department who have hired undergraduate student interns or provided financial support for graduate students. The Center will continue this successful practice in a more visible, coordinated way.

The Center is being structured to offer employment, research, and professional advancement options to our students. We plan to integrate the Center's activities into the undergraduate curriculum by offering more "real world" design project choices to our Plant Design seniors. Paid student interns may also be recruited and assigned to a member company's project (s). A paid internship would be a voluntary practicum that has the feel (and rewards) of an on-campus coop experience.

Students involved in the Center's activities are expected to gain experience and skills in areas valued by employers: Project management, planning and conducting research, economics of facilities planning and construction, “process diagnostic” principles for identifying and ranking optimization possibilities, equipment selection and sizing, simulation, equipment tuning, control strate- gies, innovative technologies, energy utilization, environmental concerns, safety/ risk, and other identified areas as the needs of society evolve, solving open-ended problems, professionalism, and teamwork.

An example of a student-staffed project is DuPont's ongoing effort to promote awareness of industry's current and future chemical property data needs. Students supported by this educational grant to the Center are learning about, and addressing, some of the chemical property data requirements under the new European REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals) Regulation, which went into force on June 1, 2007.

Under REACH, industry will have greater responsibility to manage the risks from chemicals and to provide safety information. The Center invites interested companies and individuals to join the Center. By participating, sponsors can support the educational mission of the department and assist local and regional industries. Please speak with Tony Rogers (906 -487-2210, tnrogers@mtu.edu) if you would like more information about the Center or how to support its activities