Environmental Awareness in the Material and Energy Balances Course

The materials and energy balances course is often the first in the chemical engineering curriculum, and provides many students their initial exposure to calculations in the field. This work aims at supplementing the concepts included in this introductory course through a simple design project that students can easily relate to. More specifically, they were asked to design a water reservoir using campus buildings as a guide for its volume, as well as consumption data based on their personal habits. Aside from providing meaningful context to a material balance problem, the purpose of this approach was twofold: 1) to promote awareness of the environmental impact of their daily habits, and 2) to gain a sense of scale. A comprehensive survey was administered to assess if the project improved student understanding within these two dimensions. Similar projects with different design frameworks (such as a power supply balance) could also be used to promote awareness in other future engineering challenges.