When I last posted you may have noticed that the final year design project was weel and truely into full swing. I am pleased to say that the group stage was handind in last week successfully and that means that I have only the individual stage left to complete my degree!
After handing in the report I returned to my family home. I booked myself in at my hospital to have some teeth removed (wisdoms and molars) that have been giving me hastle for a little while now. I am pleased to say that the teeth have been successfully removed although I feel somewhat delirious still what with all the painkillers and such! Oh well, this means that I get to have about 5 days off before I get back work again!
For my individual project I am to design a liquid phase reactor to convert hydrogen and carbon dioxide (both gaseous) into a methanol product. For those of you who may be familiar, methanol is typically made on the bulk scale via a gas phase reaction using syngas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen produced by reforming a hydrocarbon feedstock). The idea of a liquid phase reaction is relatively novel and poses several interesting challenges. The presence of a paraffin type liquid is to remove the heat of reaction, i.e. it itself is not consumed in the reaction.
So, over the next few weeks I will be busy - as you will no doubt discover from my posts! But, from the beginning of May I will be unofficially finished (official graduation not until the end of June) when I wish to talk about some more general chemical engineering topics.
Well, the end is nigh! Frank Morton has been and gone, which was a fantastic time this year in Manchester by the way, and the final deadlines are fast approaching! I now officially have 7 weeks left of my 5 year degree, quite a scary prospect really!
Unfortunately, I can't give you a very detailed update on the design project at the moment due to being exceptionally busy, however, I do plan to explain what i've been doing come Easter when I get some time off.
I now have my graduation dates set - so it really is to end soon! I will post again soon - I finish in 8 days for a 3 week break so will have much more time to update you all properly!
I would imagine that the majority of you reading this will have been aware of the elevated presence of climate change issues, especially relating to carbon dioxide emissions, in the news over the past few years. Depending on who you talk to climate change is either a natural phenomena that is out of human control, or it is an issue that man is complicating with potentially devasting consequences.
I have been lucky enough over the years to attend lectures by great authorities on climate change representing both sides of the argument. This has enabled me to construct my own understanding of the situation, of course being sympathetic to both perspectives, and analyse what could be done to make a difference.
Many of you may have been introduced to the idea of a
carbon footprint (CF); a measure of how much CO2 we each release to the atmosphere on an annual basis. The UK government have released targets for all of us to reduce our CF significantly by 2050, however personally, I believe these targets to be somewhat unrealistic. It would mean that people are unable to take long-haul flights for holiday, travel to work via carbon-neutral means for the majority of the year, etc. I just don't see people doing this without great incentive.
Well we are all privvy now to how we can make a change: turn the lights off when not using them, use a bicycle or walk instead or taking the car, recycle materials, etc. As a final year chemical engineering student I have been given the opportunity to look at industial methods of chipping into these CO2 reduction targets. 5 of my peers and I have been given the task to design a process to capture CO2 from which methanol is synthesised. This is for my final ever design project!
If you have taken a keen interest in reducing CO2 then you may have read about modern advances in emissions reduction, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) from a point source (i.e. power station). Some power stations are now being built or retrofitted to reform natural gas and air into CO2 and H2 rich streams: H2 is burned in the power plant as a
carbon neutral energy vector, and CO2 is pumped back to a gas field to be sequestered and provide enhanced hydrocarbon recovery. The issue with this is that by storing CO2 there is still the potential for it to be released to the atmosphere.
Our design project aims to study the possibility of capturing the CO2 and converting it into a useful bulk chemical instead of leaving it stored somewhere in the lithosphere. This means that the final 10 weeks of my degree are going to be exceptionally busy, however, I would like to think that they prove to be very interesting and rewarding.
