Demonstration of chemical engineering principles to a multidisciplinary engineering audience

This paper describes two demonstration experiments: an automatic drip coffee maker and a manually operated reverse osmosis unit, that have been used to show the basic principles of chemical engineering processes to high school and multidisciplinary freshman engineering audiences. The demonstrations are integrated into a combined lecture/lab format and also can be utilized at various points in the curriculum as well as to pre-college students. The value of demonstrations and follow-up mini-laboratory experiments to reinforce the hands-on approach to engineering education will be mentioned. A particular focus of the paper is how chemical engineering principles are introduced into lower level courses through demonstrations and how the basic principles of process engineering can be taught to a multidisciplinary student group. These presentations and experiments are drawn from past experience and those of this present year with our new multidisciplinary Freshman Engineering Clinic course at Rowan University.