Certificate program in Chemical Process Industries
Many engineering students from TAMUK find employment with local or regional refinery or process chemical companies in the Corpus Christi, Coastal Bend, Crossroads, or Houston-Galveston area. These companies hire chemical engineers, as well as engineers of other disciplines, such as mechanical, electrical, and environmental. There are several technical topics important to the chemical process industries which are only briefly touched upon in the curriculum-required courses of the chemical engineering major, due to the limitation on hours for the degree program. The Chemical Process Industries certificate provides a series of additional courses that will directly benefit engineers of any discipline in adapting to these important and extensive employment network of the chemical process industries in Texas.
Four courses have been developed for the Chemical Process Industries certificate now offered by the Chemical Engineering program at Texas A&M University – Kingsville. The certificate program and all the courses have been approved by the university. The specific requirements of this certificate program are provided elsewhere on this webpage. The four new courses are:
CHEN 3305 – Introduction to ChE for Non-majors
A comprehensive introduction to the basic principles and technologies used by chemical engineers in industry today. Includes an introduction to basic quantitative principles in the fundamental chemical engineering topics of mass and energy balances, fluid and heat transport, and thermodynamics. Credit for this course is not allowed if the student has declared chemical engineering as their major. This course is required for non-majors pursing the Chemical Process Industries certificate. Pre-requisites: CHEM 1312, MATH 2414, and PHYS 2326.
Course Objectives:
- Perform basic mass balance and energy balance calculations that arise from the quantitative analysis of chemical processes.
- Perform basic thermodynamic calculations fundamental to chemical engineering processes.
- Perform basic calculations associated with fluid static and simple fluid dynamic systems.
- Perform basic calculations in heat conduction and convective heat transfer, including calculations associated with heat exchangers based upon these principles
CHEN 4341 – Chemical Process Safety
A comprehensive overview of safety topics in the design, construction, startup, operation, and shutdown of chemical process plants and refineries. Pre-requisites: CHEN 3310
Course Objectives:
- Understand chemical hazard characteristics, including human toxicity.
- Describe modes of chemical release and calculate spread of released chemicals into uncontrolled (non-contained) conditions.
- Describe modes of fire and explosion of flammable and ignitable chemicals and mixtures.
- Chemical release, fire and explosion mitigation techniques, including relief systems.
- Practical control of chemical reactions.
- Evaluation of chemical and process hazards associated with transient conditions during process startup and shutdown.
- Safety procedures common to chemical process plants and refineries.
CHEN 4342 – Chem Process Sustainability
A study of sustainability topics applied to the chemical process industry, focusing on energy conservation, process and utility water conservation, hazardous chemical replacement or minimization, and process substitution at chemical process plants and refineries. Pre-requisites: CHEN 3310
Course Objectives:
- Introduce and define sustainability concepts regarding energy, water resources, and toxic chemicals as they relate to the chemical process industry.
- Determine the impact of certain sustainable approaches by calculating life-cycle costs and greenhouse gas emissions.
- Understand the details of approaches in green chemistry and green engineering as they apply to development of more sustainable chemical processes. Represent limitations to sustainability due to thermodynamic constraints.
- Calculate process savings obtainable from energy conservation analyses performed on chemical processes.
- Calculate savings obtainable from water conservation analyses (both process and utility sides) performed on chemical processes.
- Identify sustainability gains available from toxic materials substitution or minimization.
CHEN 4343 – Environmental Treatment of Chemical Processes
A study of the different processes used to treat air, water, and solid waste streams associated with the chemical process industry and refineries. Pre-requisites: CHEN 3310, and CHEN 4389.
- Identify and classify the most common air and water pollutants arising from the chemical process and petroleum refining industries.
- Calculate concentrations of pollutants in air and water streams discharged from chemical industries, under treated and non-treatment scenarios.
- Understand the methods and limitations associated with air and water sampling for determination of discharge concentrations of pollutants.
- Understand the technologies used and perform the calculations necessary for the basic design of the primary air and water treatment technologies used at chemical process and refining industries.
- Understand the technologies used for collection, disposal or treatment of solid and hazardous wastes from chemical process industries.
The Wayne H. King Department of Chemical and Natural Gas Engineering is now offering a transcripted certificate in Chemical Process Industries (CHPI). The student must complete 12 credits (four courses) from the following seven courses with a grade of C or better in each, to fulfill the requirements for this certificate. The CHEN 3305 course is only available to those students who are non-chemical engineering majors.
- CHEN 3305 – Introduction to Chemical Engineering for Non-majors
- CHEN 4311 – Biochemical Engineering
- CHEN 4389 – Mass Transport
- CHEN 4341 – Chemical Process Safety
- CHEN 4342 – Chem Process Sustainability
- CHEN 4343 – Environmental Treatment of Chemical Processes
- CHEN 4386 – Air Pollution Control