Chemical Engineering 2800

University of Utah
Summer 2007 Project Assignment
Prof. Geoff Silcox
First Draft Due Thursday, J uly 17, by 17:00
Final Draft Due Wednesday, August 1 by 17:00
Introduction
This assignment will provide you with practice in working effectively in a team to
produce a well written, technically clear report. The assignment involves making
energy and material balances calculations for a simplified, oxygen-blown boiler.
Your final draft should be no more than 10 pages long and should be double
spaced. The page limit does not include figures, tables, or the bibliography.
Your first draft will focus on material balances and is due J uly 17. The first draft
will be reviewed by J ennifer Large and me so that you have some prompt
feedback. Your second draft will include material and energy balances and is
due August 1.

Useful background information for this project is given in the report entitled, The
Future of Coal: An Interdisciplinary MIT Study (Deutch and Moniz, 2007). In
particular, Figure A-3.B.8 on page 119 of the Glossary and Appendices provides
a detailed overview of the process with coal as the fuel. This assignment looks
at a much simpler system.
Problem Statement
The oxy-fuel process sketched below is producing steam to generate electricity.
The unit is operated with 10 % excess air. The air is 95 % oxygen and 5 %
nitrogen, by volume. The fuel is 90.85 weight percent carbon with the balance
hydrogen. The higher heating value (HHV) is 18,900 Btu/lb.

Air
Recycle
Reactor
Heat
exchanger
Mixer
S1 S2 S3
Divider
Fuel
Liquid water
Steam
S4
To sequestration
process


Figure 1. Schematic of simplified oxy-fuel unit with recirculation of flue gas.


The heat exchanger removes thermal energy from the flue gases such that the
temperature of S3 is 400 K. The temperature of the air stream is also 400 K.
The fuel enters the reactor at 300 K and has a specific heat of 0.95 kJ /(kg K).

Your assignment is to determine (1) the compositions of all streams, (2) the
temperature of the reactor as a function of the fraction of S3 that is recycled, (3)
and provide your best engineering analysis of how much recycle is required. The
later will require that you consider materials of construction and their upper
operating temperatures. Your supervisor has asked that your calculations
include recycle fractions of zero, 0.10, 0.20, 0.40, and 0.80. She wants the
energy balance calculations to include the variation of specific heat with
temperature by using the equations listed in Table E.1, p. 1049 of the text. Your
results should be presented graphically and in tables.

A suggested outline for your report is given below. Additional information on
each of these sections is attached.

TITLE PAGE
INTRODUCTION
THEORY
METHODS
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
REFERENCES
APPENDICES

Figures should be formatted as shown in Figure 1 and each should have a
caption underneath. Tables should be formatted as shown below in Table 1 and
each should have a heading. Every figure and table should be introduced and
discussed in the body of your report. Citation of references should be according
to the AMA style guidelines at
http://www.liu.edu/CWIS/CWP/library/workshop/citama.htm.


Table 1. Effect of fraction of S3 sent to recycle on the temperature of the reactor.

Fraction of S3
to Recycle
Temperature
of Reactor, K
0 ?
0.1 ?
0.2 ?
0.4 ?
0.8 ?


Grading
You are working on the reports as part of a team, but each person in the team is
to turn in their own, independently written report. Each report will be assessed
using the attached rubric. Your participation as a team member will be evaluated
by your colleagues using the attached form.
References
Deutch J , Moniz EJ . The Future of Coal: An Interdisciplinary MIT Study.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2007. Available at
http://web.mit.edu/coal/. Accessed J une 21, 2007.
Appendices
The appendices include (1) a grading rubric, (2) a rating form for team citizenship,
and (3) guidelines for formatting your report.
University of Utah
CH EN 2800 Fundamentals of Process Engineering
Scoring Rubric for Project Reports

Outcomes
Evaluation
5 =exemplary
4 =proficient
3 =apprentice
1 =novice
1. Clearly stated purpose.
Comments




2. Technically accurate.
Comments




3. Concise and well organized.
Comments




4. Correct citation of sources.
Comments




5. Effective use of graphs and drawings with clear labels
and correct spacing as well as explanation and discussion
in text.
Comments




6. Correct punctuation, grammar, usage, and spelling.
Comments





TOTAL __________
Name Date
Rating Team Citizenship
Please write the names of all the members of your team, INCLUDING YOURSELF, and
rate the degree to which each member fulfilled his or her responsibilities.
Your confidential responses are used to assign individual grades from the group grade
assigned to your proposal or report. The possible ratings are:
Excellent Consistently went above and beyond; tutored teammates, carried more than his
or her fair share of the load.
Good Consistently did what he or she was supposed to do, very well prepared and
cooperative.
Satisfactory Usually did what he or she was supposed to do, acceptably well prepared
and cooperative.
Marginal Sometimes failed to show up or complete tasks, rarely prepared.
Superficial Practically no participation.
These ratings should reflect each individuals level of participation, effort and sense of
responsibility to achieving team goals, not his or her academic ability.
Team Member Names
(You must also include a rating for yourself)
Team Member Rating
(Use words from list above; e.g., Good)





Your name Date
The Project Report Format

This Project Report Format is intended for use in undergraduate Chemical Engineering class
projects. The Project Report is a complete account of the project. The length, content and
importance of the various sections will vary based on the nature of the project but each report
should include the principal elements described below. Each section should begin a new
paragraph of the report and should be appropriately titled.

TITLE PAGE. The report should have a Title Page bearing the title of the report, the course
name and number, the project number and name, the date the report was submitted, the name of
the author, the names of the group members, and the signature of the author.

I INTRODUCTION. The Introduction should include a brief statement of the project
objectives along with a description of the problem and its origin. A review of background
literature on the report subject, insofar as such literature relates to the scope of the project, may
need to be included.

II. THEORY. The theory section should contain a concise description of the fundamental
principles and equations that will be used to address the problem. The relationship between the
theory presented and the project objectives should be clear. This section need not contain a
derivation of common equations but should contain references to sources where the derivation is
available. The theory provides the basis for the solution of the project problem. Sometimes
either the Introduction or the Theory section is short enough that it may be convenient to
combine these two sections.

Whenever an equation is used, it should be centered on a separate line and numbered in the order
in which it appears. Equations numbers should be in parentheses and aligned with the right
margin. Symbols should be defined when first used. Equations are a shorthand method of
writing English and should be punctuated according to normal rules! Note particularly that the
equals sign ("=") is a verb ("is equal to") and, therefore, one can write a complete and
satisfactory sentence in which "=" is the verb.

III. METHODS: This section is where you explain what you or your team actually did to
achieve the project objectives. This section should be written in past tense since the work has
been completed. It is traditional in scientific and engineering writing to describe methods in
passive voice. Avoid using the first person (I or We) in this section.

Different projects may employ a variety of methods, such as laboratory experiments, computer
models, polls, or literature reviews. The contents of this section will vary depending on the
nature of the project but may include diagrams, flow charts, tables and equations when they can
aid in describing your efforts. This section should contain sufficient detail to allow the reader to
reproduce your results. In all cases, the relationship between the work you did and the project
objectives should be clear.

If a computer program was written as part of the project, the algorithm should be described in the
methods section and the actual program should be included in an appendix. If some sort of
measurements were made for the project, the number and type of measurements should be
described, along with any equipment used to make the measurements. If the project involves
optimizing some performance criteria or exploring the effects of different variables, be sure to
explain the procedure used, including which variables were varied, the ranges over which they
varied and any algorithms used.

IV. RESULTS. All of the results that are pertinent to the project objectives should be described
in this section. Key quantitative results should usually be presented in graphical or tabular form.
If the data you present has been processed in some way, it is generally appropriate to include the
raw data in an appendix. If the equations developed in the theory or methods section have been
used to process the data, they should be referenced. You should clearly identify how the results
are related to the project objective. Additionally, a quantitative discussion of uncertainties and
confidence levels will normally be part of this section.

Tables and figures should be neatly prepared with the aid of software to yield a professional
result. Every table and figure should have a number and a complete title or caption. Figure
captions or titles should be placed below the figure. Table titles or captions should be placed
above the table. A more detailed description of the proper format for figures and tables can be
found in the document figs_tables.pdf on the U of U Chemical Engineering web site.

The figure or table should make sense to a casual reader when removed from the report. If
necessary, a table or figure caption may be a complete paragraph. The only purpose of a table or
a figure is to support some point made in the text. The report author, not the reader, should
establish the interpretation of the tables and figures. If there is no reference to a table or figure in
the text, there is no point in including it. For Project Reports, tables and figures should be
located on pages near where they are discussed in the text.

V. DISCUSSION The discussion of results is a key component of a good Project Report. In
this section the author will tell the reader what the data presented in the results section mean and
how they relate to the project objectives. The precise nature of this section will depend on the
project. In some cases it may be appropriate to combine the results and discussion sections but it
is always essential that you include an interpretation of your results and not merely a description
of them. Below are examples of questions that are frequently applicable in the discussion
section.

What are the most important trends in the results?
If multiple cases were analyzed, how do they compare?
Are the results consistent with accepted results from theory or previously published
work? If not, what plausible explanations are there for the results?
Are the results what you expected from intuition? If not, why?
What if any problems were identified in solving this problem?
What insights were gained that might assist other engineers approaching similar
problems?
Are the results accurate and detailed enough to fully meet the objectives? If not, where
do they fall short?

VI: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS. This section will summarize your
solution to the problem. Recommendations consistent with the problem solution should then be
given. This is the one section of the report where it is appropriate to use the first person (i.e.
Based on these results, we recommend . . . ).

Both the conclusions and recommendations should arise naturally from the Discussion Section.
Conclusions and recommendations should be made for each of the project objectives as
described in the Introduction. You should assess whether the objectives have been fully met. If
not, you may want to recommend future work.

This is an extremely important section of an engineering report; this section should be given
especially careful and thoughtful treatment.

VII. REFERENCES. References should be listed in alphabetical order or in the order in which
they were cited, using the style in Chemical Engineering Progress or that in the AIChE J ournal.
The references should be located immediately after the Table of Nomenclature at the end of the
main body of the report. References must be complete and specific, so that the reader could
quickly locate the particular material cited. A reference to "Perry's Handbook, 7th Edition," for
example, would be inadequate; the citation should include the specific page number(s). It is of
great importance to identify clearly and to give proper credit for quoted material. In addition,
extensive quoting in reports that are for public sale or duplication in large quantities requires
written permission of any copyright holder. Furthermore, your report grade is based on your
work and excessive quoting will detract from the grade. If you feel that material in a text or
journal is important, digest it and discuss it in your own words but be sure to state and reference
the source used as a basis for your discussion. Plagiarism is serious business; do not copy any
substantial amount of writing (e.g., even a modifying phrase) verbatim without enclosure in
quotation marks and proper referencing of the source.

Please see "Guidelines for Literature References in the Department of Chemical Engineering at
the University of Utah." It shows the details of the reference formats that are accepted. Other
formats are not accepted. When you are preparing your reference section, have that document
open in front of you. Follow its instructions.

VIII. APPENDICES. The sole function of an appendix is to support the main text. The
Appendices should not contain any information that is not referred to in the text. Also, the text
should be able to stand alone as a meaningful entity. Thus, nothing should be relegated to the
Appendices that is essential to the basic understanding of the text itself.

Items which might commonly be included in the appendix of a Project Report include: computer
programs, raw data, and derivations of equations.