A LCHEMISTA ..

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

T U RB UL EN CE DRIFTING IDEAS..
NEWSLETTER DATE: AUGUST 12

EDITORIAL..
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

Dear reader, Carrying the with of legacy the forIts will anticipated create a

DEPARTMENT IN LIMELIGHT

ward, we are glad to present you of 2nd issu e T URB ULEN C E, students All en-

that this newsletter unique podium for students to appreciate and this think field differ-

ALCHEMISTA REBORN MODERN MARVEL.. INSIDE STORY OF QUARK 12

GUEST LECTURE..

newsletter

association ALCHEMISTA of 4 BITS PLINAI,GOA. gineers employ mathematics, physics, and the en5 gineering technical 8 art to overcome in a problems

ent!! After all its all about inception of new ideas

safe and economical fashion. Yet, it is the chemical 9 engineer alone that draws upon the science of chemistry to solve a wide range of problems. This newsletter brings into its purview view of the the the 360o field innoglobe, in indegree All the Best

FACULTY INTERVIEW.

ALCHEMISTA.

THE A - TEAM..

along with hi-tech vations pus tech , across

projects running on cam Deepak Ojha Megha Sharma Sneha Choudhary Akriti Subhanshu Pareek Kaustub Kinshuk Wadhwa Prabudh Sharma Yogita Garg Aarthi Sivakumar

participation and faculty. an

fests

formative interview of one of our

Geothermal plant in ICELAND... chemical engineering at its extreme..

WANT TO SUGGEST SOMETHING ? REACH US AT:

AlchemistaChemEngg@gmail.com

TURBULENCE DRIFTING IDEAS..

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D EPARTMENT H IGHLIGHTS

Dr. Srinivas Krishnaswamy has received a mega project from GAIL India ltd. for Rs 3.82 Crore to work on Seawater (LNG). 33.75 He Desalination has in Rs. for also 4 using Liquified DST in in with the Natural worth of Gas Rs. Pune Highusing received Lakh) project area

Lakhs

collaboration conversion

Thermax, boilers

(funding efficiency

energy

steam

unmixed combustion.

Dr.

S.S.Baral

and

Dr.P.V.Rao

have

been

granted

funding of Rs 33.9 Lakh from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology to work on Development of Efficient Bioleaching process for metal recovery from spent catalyst.

Dr.P.V.Rao and Dr. S.S.Baral have received a funding of Rs 37.4 Lakh from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology proposed digestion research and on Investigating sludge the advanced pretreatment for their of comethods effect

and anaerobic potential of organic waste.

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R ESURRECTION O F A LCHEMISTA...
This academic session of 2012-2013 will see ALCHEMISTA, the students body of the chemical engineering department in a new avatar. It is restructured to increase efficiency and accountability. The basic idea is to distribute powers and responsibilities among all the members of the A-team. The body is internally divided into three committees which will carry out the basic functioning. The student body is headed by our Faculty in Charge Dr Srinivas Krishnaswamy. He will preside over the General Body Meeting and will be our mentor and guide. In addition he will be appointing a Co-Faculty who will make the important decisions in his absence. The reigns of the administration of the body falls in the hand of the Student Co-coordinator. His basic function is to manage the operations of the committees. He will preside over all sub Committee meetings and will be the secretary of the IIChE chapter of BITS Pilani, Goa Campus. The Student Co-coordinator will be elected by the students of Chemical Engineering. The current one for 2012-2013 session is Aaditya Shah. He will be assisted by the Secretary. He is responsible for preparing a monthly report of each committee. The selection of Secretary is also through election and for the session 2012-2013 the secretary is Prabudh Sharma. The Academic Committee technical part of the body it is responsible for organising lab and industrial visits, preparing a database of all the technical projects done by the department of Chemical Engineering. They are also responsible for making projects for Quark and technical fests in other universities. The External Affairs Committee is face of ALCHEMISTA. It is responsible for contacting and coordinating with the alumni and also to contact eminent Chemical Engineers for guest lectures and as judges for Quark events. The final committee of the triad is Internal Affairs Committee. Their job is to manage the administration of ALCHEMISTA. They are responsible for its finances and the IIChE Chapter, organizing orientation for the first year students and also to publish the newsletter. The head of each committee is appointed by the Co-coordinator through an interview. The committee for the session 2012-2013 are Yash Bagani and Anushree Rathod for the External, Avi Agarwal and Nikhil Ojha for Internal and Geetansh Gupta for Academic Committee. This team will be assisted by 2nd year students along with 1st yearites who will be inducted as the session progresses.

TURBULENCE DRIFTING IDEAS..

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MODERN MARVELS:

S ELF

HEALING PLASTIC..

Nature has endowed all kinds of biological systems with the ability to repair themselves explained Professor Marek W. Urban, Ph.D., talking about the research. Some we can see, like the skin healing and new bark forming in cuts on a tree trunk. Some are invisible, but help keep us alive and healthy, like the self-repair system that DNA uses to fix genetic damage to genes. The new plastic tries to mimic nature, issuing a red signal when damaged. It bleeds red at the site of injury. Then it heals itself when exposed to visible light , changes in temperature or pH inspired by the properties of tree trunks and human skin. The plastics created by Urbans group have small molecular links that stretch across the long chemical chains that make up the plastic. When a scratch or cut happens, these links break and change their shape. This new class of highlight-and-fix plastic is designed to overcome a critical flaw of plastics: Once damaged, plastics are very hard to fix and often just have to be replaced. For this reason, self-repair plastics have been one active area of research in materials science. This plastic could serve a variety of purposes, from things like nail polish to self healing car fenders to airplanes and laptops. It would improve safety by drawing attention to a structural defect , and it could repair minor defects in the presence of intense light. Dr. Urban says the new class of plastics can selfrepair repeatedly and it is also more environmentally friendly than most of the others because its production is based in water rather than organic solvents and is made from water based copolymers. The group is now focused on making self-repair plastics that can tolerate heat.

The new plastic tries red to signal mimic when nature, issuing a damaged. It bleeds red at the site of injury. Then it heals itself when exposed to visible light , changes temperature pH.. in or

TURBULENCE DRIFTING IDEAS..

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C HEMICAL WARFARE AT Q UARK12 HEAT WAVE:

Heat wave of the of events year. the develop explore was one innovative chemical this to event participants area. The would have to was held in two make a setup rounds:The containing ed by a two Round 1 :chambers separat- ticipants Par-

department

It encouraged participants an alternate

source of energy and revolutionary w hi ch produces Basically required t e c hn o l o gy the its this world power. event

gave 1.5mm p r e s e n t a t i o n gap. In one of the demonstrating the two chambers the mechanism and reaction place other salt be will and take j u s t i f y i n g the in the choice of reaction a Round 2 :- In this round the actual heat transfer took place in the setup designed by the participants and the temperature of the salt solution was noted down.. will as a of

will change the way

chamber solution

poured act

which

would

HE AT encouraged

W A VE the to

participant to devise an eco-friendly exothermic reaction which could generate sufficient heat to be transferred to another container containing salt solution which would be given to the participants.

measurement

the heat produced. In the 1.5mm gap a metal plate / conducting the mem-

par t ic ipa nt s

develop an alternate source of energy and explore revolutionary technology which will change the way the world produces its power

brane designed by

participants The event saw would be kept to decent participafill the gap. The tion and the first whole setup should prize was bagged by team from fit 1ft x 1ft base BITS, Pilani Goa Campus followed by D.J Sanghvi College of Engineering, Mumbai.

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

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T HE

WAR RAGES ON..

Water Desalination project:

The common methods of abstracting fresh water from salt water such as abstracting by distillation, reverse osmosis and electrolysis are intensive-energy techniques. For this reason desalination techniques are competitive only for large -scale production (thousands of m3/d). However, in some circumstances, the desalination needs do not exceed a few m3/d. This decentralized demand favours local water production by developing other desalination processes, especially those using renewable or recovered energy (solar, geothermal, etc.). The technology of humidificationdehumidification process (HD) satisfies some of these demands, in particular flexibility in capacity with moderate installation and operating costs. The current HD installations are in very compact units containing two exchangers: an evaporator where air is humidified and a condenser where distilled water is recovered.

Principle of functioning of the HD process:

The HD process is based on the fact that air can be mixed with important quantities of vapour. The amount of vapour able to be carried by air increases with the temperature; in fact, 1 kg of dry air can carry 0.5 kg of vapour and about 670 kcal when its temperature increases from 30C to 80C [2]. When airflow is in contact with salt water, air extracts a certain quantity of vapour at the expense of sensitive heat of salt water, provoking cooling. On the other hand, the distilled water is recovered by maintaining humid air at contact with the cooling surface, causing the condensation of a part of vapour mixed with air. Generally the condensation occurs in another exchanger in which salt water is preheated by latent heat recovery. Energy consumption is represented by this heat and by the mechanical energy required for the pumps and the blowers. The amount of distilled water recovered varies from 5% to 20% of the quantity of salt water in circulation.

The current HD installations are in very compact units containing two exchangers: an evaporator where air is humidified and a condenser where distilled water is recovered.

The principle of functioning for the HD process is illustrated in Fig. 1.

The basic cycle consists of a (1) and dehumidifiers (2). heat source, air humidifiers

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Page 7

The brine is passed through a heater (3) where its temperature rises, then through packed towers where water vapour and heat are given up to the counter-current air stream, reducing the brine temperature. One packed tower, or several in series, may be used as the humidifier depending on results to be achieved and design conditions. Some air must be bled off into the dehumidifier at various points for efficient operation. The fresh water stream, with its flow rate and temperature increased, leaves the humidifier and passes through a heat exchanger where it gives up its increase in enthalpy to the incoming brine stream. The dehumidifier (2) consists of a series of packed towers, using fresh or salt water as the cooling phase. The air is cooled and dehumidified simultaneously since the humidity of saturated air decreases with temperature. The brine enters the heat exchanger where it is preheated by the fresh water stream and is then recycled through the brine water. An amount of water corresponding to the production rate is held from the fresh water stream, and the remainder is recycled to the dehumidifier.

Simplified Flow sheet:

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

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G LIMPSE

OF GUEST LECTURE..

Our college was graced by the presence of Dr. Madhunkar O Garg,director,CSIR-IIP,DehraDun. In the interactive session a pilot plant made by CSIR-IIP Dehra Dun which can produce 300g per hour of fuel by recycling pulverized waste polymers (plastic) was discussed.

He explained that the plant would be a two-stage pyrolysis process in which a thermo-chemical decomposition of organic material at a high temperature could convert almost all the plastic part of the waste into useful fuels. The efficiency would be so high that hardly any residue would be left for disposal. However, the polyethylene (in softer form like bags) and polypropylene (in rigid forms like buckets) would have to be pre-treated and cleaned to remove all dirt.

12.5 million tons of

To operate this technology in high LPG, high gasoline or high diesel production modes, three kinds of catalysts have been developed at Dehra Dun. Refining of liquid and gas products, would be almost as good as refinery products from petroleum refining and can be as high as 50% each in this process.

plastics per annum are consumed in India out of this about 65% consist of polyethylene and polypropylene wastes while about 35% of these two are used in packaging and bags.

Dr Garg stressed on the fact that 12.5 million tons of plastics per annum are consumed in India out of this about 65% consist of polyethylene and polypropylene wastes while about 35% of these two are used in packaging and bags. But other plastics, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyester wastes can be converted back to its starting materials through different technologies. Polyester wastes, especially mineral water bottles can be hydrolyzed while PVC wastes can be mechanically recycled.

He concluded by stating that the talks are on with local industries to set up a demonstration plant and test out the idea in Goa and states like Goa could benefit as CSIR-IIP and gas authority of India limited (GAIL) are keen to help set up a demonstration unit within Goa .

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FACULTY INTERVIEW
PROF.SRINIVAS KRISHNASWAMY

H.O.D,CHEMICAL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT, BITS-PILANI,GOA.

Q. What are the factors that attracted you to the field of Chemical engineering?

ANS. The main driving force for me has always all been the ability to engineer life a diverse along range of products. A chemical engineer applies the physical sciences, sciences with mathematics and economics to convert raw materials to useful and valuable products. For me, this tremendous capability of a chemical engineer has been an inspiration.

A chemical engineer applies all the physical sciences, life sciences along with mathematics and economics to convert raw materials to useful and valuable products.

Q. What according to you is the significance of industrial exposure?

ANS. According to me, it is very important for any engineer to be able to apply the basic principles he or she has learnt. Every engineer needs to broaden his or her knowledge - from the know-why to the know-how of a process. The best way to do this is through industrial experience. BITS encourages all its students to get a know-how 2 (PS2) of the industrial Apart from practices that, I through its Practice School 1 (PS1) and Practice School programs. will also encourage students to go for internships so that they have an in-depth knowledge of their subject.

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

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..INTERVIEW CONTINUED

Q. What are the concerns of a chemical engineer? ANS. A chemical Cost, engineer Society should and adopt a pentagon approach should be

in designing a process. All the five aspects Technology, Environment, Energy efficiency given an equal weightage. Taking into consideration all these factors makes the job of a chemical engineer interesting and challenging at the same time. The main concern of a chemical engineer is that almost all the research and development work is restricted to laboratory. A very few percent of these lab works make it up to the industrial level.level: A small percentage of laboratory studies eventually result in scale up and final application. So, scale-up of lab projects is a big issue. Another challenge for a chemical engineer is to develop a process which is not only efficient but also safe and economical. Many ingenious technologies like trapping solar energy, nanotechnology, etc. are still not amenable for large scale application. However the potential of these is huge. Q. What do you feel is important apart from the courses taught? ANS. Apart from the courses, a chemical engineer should be well aware about the social impact of any technology. He should also be aware about the strict guidelines, norms and code of conduct enforced in a chemical industry. He should know about the importance of professional ethics in an industry. This leads to an improvement in the knowledge base and also helps in the overall personality development. Q What are the major changes made in the curriculum for 2011 batch? ANS. The course content remains more or less the same. The

major change is that earlier the students were introduced to their Compulsory Disciplinary Courses (CDCs) in their third year.

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

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...INTERVIEW CONTINUED
Now students will be studying their CDCs from the second year itself. The curriculum now includes 15 CDCs. Apart from this, Once the student has its mandatory for each student to complete 5 chemical department electives and 3 Humanities electives. completed these electives, he/she is free to take up open electives. The new curriculum is more focused and concentrated on chemical courses. introduced standing. years. Q. Could you elaborate upon the new concept of design paper after The Labs related to any particular course will be the course is taught will to be enable revised better in under3-4 course structure every

projects? ANS. The students are given the opportunity to work upon Home paper, graduate nia, a final year In design home project paper etc. the where they apply all the fundamentals of chemical engineering learnt during the underprogram. projects, They students will the help study flow the in detail about manufacturing process of a chemical e.g. ammosulphuric acid, glycerol, of will analyze will sheet involved in the manufacturing process and study about the techno-economic processes.
Q. What message would you like to give to the students? ANS. My only message to the students would be Be best at what you do.

feasibility

project.

This

students in understanding the complexities involved in chemical

Every engineer needs to broaden his or her knowledge - from the know-why to the know-how of a process.