Week 1: Module Overview

The first lesson of ICPD was a rather informative lesson that gave us a rather interesting introduction to what the module ICPD was about.

To start off the lesson, we were given an introduction on how the chemical engineering principles that we had learnt in year one are integrated into designing chemical products.

Such chemical engineering principles range from Chemistry principles such as crystallisation, electrolysis and fermentation to more technical concepts. Examples of such concepts include topics like Fluid flow, Heat Transfer and Thermodynamics that would cover a few concepts such as Energy and Mass Balance, Condensation and the Carnot Cycle.

These chemical engineering principles surprisingly found easily in day to day products such as toothpastes and concrete which consists of rheological concepts on how fluids and solids behave. Other types of principles can be found in common food products such as cheese, fruits and vegetables where the concept of membrane separation is applied.

Later on, we were taught the four different categories of chemical products. Which are Commodities, Chemical devices, Molecular products and Micro-structured products.

Commodities consists of a wide range of products that are made in large quantities sold at relatively low prices.

Chemical devices consists of devices that performs a specific chemical transformation in order to provide convenience to users.

Molecular products are products that has a specific chemical structure for a purpose and are discovered through research. Such products usually comprises of medicinal pills and vaccines.

Finally, we have micro-structured products with specific functions such as paints, sun screen and frozen food.

In order to consolidate our understanding on the categories of chemical products we were tasked with finding one chemical product that would fall under any of the four categories from the table as shown.

Through finding out the different products from the various groups, we were able to gain a deeper understanding on how chemical engineering principles are applied with the aid of our lecturer detailing how and what chemical principles are in these products.

Written by:

Samuel Ngiam Jun Hao