2024 Academic Advisory Committee Meeting and Senior Design Project Presentations
Thursday, May 16, 2024
The Paper Science & Chemical Engineering Academic Advisory Committee (AAC) Meeting is an annual event held each spring.
Each year, representatives from the
paper and allied industries gather with the Paper Science & Chemical Engineering faculty and staff to listen and assess the Senior Design
Project Presentations and provide students with constructive feedback on
their projects. After the presentations the committee meeting will consist of breakout groups to discuss topics important to the depratment, a department update will be provided separately to those that register, in an email. We encourage participants
to provide constructive feedback on all discussion topics.
Registration
If you would like to be a part of the Academic Advisory Board meeting and/or be a part of the Senior Design Projects, please contact the Paper Science & Chemical Engineering Department and we will be sure to email you with further details on how to join this event. We are planning an in person event this year with an option of virtual as needed.
Questions? Please contact Angie at 715-346-4817 or engineering@uwsp.edu.
Schedule for May 16, 2024
In Person at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point, Stevens Point, WI
8:30 am Registration, continental breakfast
8:45 am Welcome and instructions
9:00 am Senior Design Project Poster Presentations: Chemical Engineering
10:00 am Senior Design Project Presentations: Paper Science Engineering (break out rooms)
11:00 am Academic Advisory Committee meeting with breakout discussions on PS&ChE important topics.
12:00 pm Adjourn for Lunch
Chemical Engineering: Senior Design Project, Spring 2024
Problem Statement. You are a process engineer in a relatively small ethylbenzene production facility. Your facility provides high-purity ethylbenzene to a styrene production plant adjacent to it. The target production rate for ethylbenzene is 80,000 mt/year. The plant operates 24 hr/day, 350 days/year (8400 h/year. Product purity must be 99.8 mol% ethylbenzene (minimum).
The Director of Engineering assigned you and your team a high-priority task of creating a simulation of the current ethylbenzene process and using it to determine the following:
- Perform an economic analysis of the current process, including capital and operational costs (including operating labor). Assume the system will have a 20-year plant life and a Minimum Acceptable Rate of Return of 8%.
- Evaluate the carbon footprint of the process.
- Identify and evaluate the hazards of the current process.
Your team wondered why this simulation was so important. After all, the plant has been running well for at least ten years. And then came the next assignment.
The styrene plant wants to increase its production capacity by 25%, meaning your facility must increase production to keep pace. Two tasks must be evaluated.
Task 1. The styrene facility must upgrade its high-pressure steam (HPS) system to support increased production. This will require a one-month shutdown of the boilers that produce HPS. Their utilities manager says they typically produce about 89,000 kg HPS/h. They have devised a few ways to use medium- and low-pressure steam to keep the process running at a lower production rate during the month-long downtime, but that is not desirable. Can we generate enough HPS using the excess capacity of our fired heater (H-301) to replace the HPS lost in the styrene facility during the shutdown? If so, what will the additional natural gas cost? If not, what percent of their steam can we replace? What modifications to the fired heater may be needed?
Task 2. With the 25% increase in production, the styrene facility plans to reduce its operating time to 8000 h/year. We must provide 120 kmol/h of ethylbenzene at the same purity to support the increase. Use your simulation to identify the potential bottlenecks in our process at this level of production and recommend changes to mitigate them.
Prepare a report that provides information about the current ethylbenzene process and your recommendations on the two tasks.
Student Design Teams:
Veronica Corwin, Austin Devecchio, and Nolan Ganser
Edie Keung, Sara Traxel, Kirstin Wroblewski, and Kayla Zimmerman
Nathan Roth, John Schaefer, Vincent Winkler, and Isaac Woelffer
Paper Science and Engineering: Senior Design Projects, Fall 2023Project 1. The Headbox approach flow system- focus on issues with basis weight variability, sheet formation improvement, and any other quality issues you identify.
Team: Connor Metzler*, Nathan Roth, John Schaefer, Kirstin Wroblewski, and
Kayla Zimmerman
Project 2. The Headbox design - focus on issues with basis weight variability,
sheet formation improvement, and any other quality issues you identify.
Team: Nolan Ganser, Edie Keung, Sara Traxel, and Isaac Woelffer
*Graduated in December 2023
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