whynotchemeng : Student

It's great to be back in college again, by the end of the first semester in second year i couldn't wait to get away but by the time i was going back to college i was well up for it. I'm about five weeks into semester two and nicely settled in. This semester again has a set of six new subjects. Only this semester they are very chemical engineering based rather than general science stuff that all science disciplines would be doing like in 1st year. One of the most interesting new subjects we are doing is a module called Bioreactor Design. I really like this subject which has only been introduced in the past year or two. Its all about engineering biology and calculating how long the life of this bacteria inside a container is going to live for without food, at what stage and time will this start producing our desired product. What type of conditions suit the growth and how would we design a reactor to facilitate these conditions for growth. It's a good interesting subject anyway. One of the strangest things about this semester is that we don't have engineering maths but instead we just have it in every other subject in one way or another, i honestly don't think there is a subject that we don't use maths in. It may sound horrible to some but its actually not too bad when you know that the maths you are doing is helping you out and your getting results that work. Other subjects we have are Physics of Materials, this is all about how to test materials for strength, what they're made of, what materials react with what and so on. I like it, its not the hardest thank god... Another new subject we have is called Particulate Systems, this is all about particles and how they act in different conditions and what type of solubility's they have and about different elements and common molecules. It pretty much ties in with the physics subject... We have a new young enthusiastic lecturer for particulates so it's only a matter of time until we sort out her enthusiasm!! ha ha. Na she's alright, we won't actually mean to break her spirit... I have a couple of more subjects that i want to give particular detail to in my next blog so I'll leave ye waiting at the edge of your seats... ha ha who am i fooling.... But one last thing, a student got in contact with me to ask a few questions about chem eng in college and stuff and i really appreciated the bit of feedback so if you have any questions about anything on chem eng in college feel free to email me on...

johnny-twomey@hotmail.com



Johnny Twomey

2nd Year Chem Eng
Cork Institute of Technology

I think I have found the key to cracking this course, it's still going to be really hard but it certainly makes things easier. It's plain and simple teamwork. It was stressed to us greatly in first year but only now do we really see the benefits to working together. Because something you might not know, someone else will, and it's a lot easier to study in a group than work on your own. Being honest, if it was not for my class mates this year I honestly would have been struggling badly this semester, and it's almost an unsaid rule between us that if someone is struggling at a subject you automatically give them a hand and help them out. One of us falls we all fall and we work and have a laugh together too. If someone was working and was not able to meet a deadline then we throw our lab report or assignment at them to help them out because you know they would do the same for you... Plain and simple, it's all about teamwork...
Finally I've finished my exams until after x-mas, where we have to sit engineering maths but I'm not too bothered about that because at least we have time to study for it. The last few weeks of college were absolutely hectic, I found it hard to find time for work, study, college, sports and girlfriend (which everyone knows is very time consuming, ha ha she's going to kill me now for saying that). Then we had a couple of last minute projects to get in, one of which was for the subject of transfer processes. I was given methyl-chloride @ 293 K and I was to calculate the optimum pipe diameter to use if i was working for a company. We were given this big formula that we had been deriving the last week in class and we had to calculate the most cost effective way of doing it. We had to take into consideration of using stainless steel pipe over galvanised, the cost of it, the maintenance of the pump, and so on... We cracked it easily enough once we got working in a group, even though it was in individually assigned project. Other subjects just finished up with the labs, and trying to get our lab reports in on time was a task in its self - never mind the exams we had to study for (I was a bit guilty of late reports myself)... I found this semester harder than either of the two semesters in first year so something had to change, and that's when we started to really study together and assign study tasks for each other and then photo copy each others notes and past exam papers which we had been working on, saves everyone else time, and you feel like doing it in better detail because you want to give the lads good notes and answers... I found with this semester that the subjects became very chemical engineering specific and in my opinion i think it will be an interesting job... Only time and work experience will tell tho... Anyway, I'm on my Christmas break, (YEEEES!!!) so have a happy Christmas and a happy new year and will talk to you in my next post....

Johnny Twomey
2nd Year Chem Eng
Cork Institute of Technology

I have been absolutely up the walls lately with exams, study and trying to fit in lab reports... None of us have had time to go out or anything... Only go to the library to study. We have had a lot of exams lately because of continuous assessment in C.I.T so its all about hard work all the time... Oh by the way our class rep, Dan Olden, is very 'hot' and is the 'best' class rep ever... I was asked to write this on my next blog... (asked by Dan himself...)

I said I would talk about my labs in this post so to start off first is with my process modeling labs. We are basically using a computer program to do the maths we do in class for us, i honestly think its easier to just do them yourself because its actually hard enough to remember what you type before and equation and so on... Its confusing enough but alright at the same time, we can go on the net when the lecturer isn't looking so its not the worst.... Then we have chemistry labs which are a bit harder than last year, one because the lab manual does not go into such detail as it did last year and last year we were spoon fed by the lecturers... This year its a lot more independent and harder to interpret, but still the labs are interesting and cover a very wide range of chemistry and chemistry techniques... We have labs in the subject transfer processes, this subject is all about how fluids and gases flow in pipes and calculations on pressures and powers of pumps. Our labs in this subject are pretty much the same only actually doing it in practice and comparing our results to theoretical results... Then there is the instrumentation labs, in our last lab we heated up a metal block and measured the readings given out from different meters and conductors such as a PT100 and a thermocouple and so on, the lab was all about calculating the most accurate instrument and which one would suit a job with certain requirements. Then there are the ASPEN labs just like from last year where we are simulating distillation columns and seeing how things would turn out using a computer programme, this looks like a very useful tool and i could definitely see how you could use this as a chemical engineer... The exams at the moment are pretty hard, finding time for everything is really hard... We just have to keep working at it and hope it was worth it in the end, which i think it will...

Johnny Twomey

2nd Year Chem Eng

Cork Institute of Technology

Back in college since the 12th of September and getting back into the swing of things, trying to get organised, buying books and all those sort of things... We got our new time tables for this year and its not very nice to our social schedule as we are in labs until five on a Friday!! no one is in that late on a friday! bit of a disaster, but I suppose we have a late start on a Wednesday so its not that bad, I'm just complaining being honest... We just changed our going out nights to a Tuesday... Enough about the important part of college and on to the work side...

We have six new subjects this semester and so far my opinion on second year is that it is definitely more engineer orientated. In first year I thought that it was very much about setting a base of knowledge and going over what we knew already, where as second year so far is starting to get more specialised. The six new subjects are engineering mathematics, chemistry which is broken up into organic chemistry and analytical chemistry, transfer processes, equilibrium separations, and process modeling... Maths this semester is kind of tricky enough as we are doing maths we never did before instead of going deeper into the maths we already knew like last year. We are doing these maths called Laplace transforms and we are supposed to be analysing the answers and figuring out what their graphs look like and if they are transient or not... I haven't a clue about them so I must look my notes. Then there is chemistry which is split up into analytical chemistry where we are studying all the techniques to analyse samples such as chromatography, and learning what these results mean. Then there's the organic side to it and we are just doing substitution reactions and general revision. Transfer processes is tricky enough in my opinion, its all about how fluids flow through pipes and what pressures they will be at and how big of a pump do we need to get this fluid from here to there. I really like this subject and the lecturer is a good laugh with his stories from the 'good oul days', its definitely very chemical engineer based anyway and an interesting challenge when analysing situations. Next is equilibrium separations and this is all about liquid-liquid extraction and flash distillation, analysing results and plotting them on graphs and figuring out the operating line and figure out the number of stages in the process... Its actually another tricky subject that you have to just watch and keep on top of as it can be quiet confusing with all the terminology. Last then is process modelling, this subject is OK we are doing Newton's methods and theory at the moment, we'll be starting labs in that soon enough so we'll be putting the theory we learned in class into practice. That's everything going on at the moment, I'll talk about the labs in the next post as we haven't had that many just yet....

Johnny Twomey

2nd year Chem Eng.

Cork Institute of Technology

I got my results from college back and I was quiet nervous getting them. We had to get them online and I forgot my password so it took me ages to figure it out, it was some anxious wait... I the end I got them and I was so happy to see that I didn't have anything to repeat, so now I'm just chilling out enjoying the summer and working... I never commented on what my exams were like in my last post so I'll give you an idea of what they were like. I had six subjects in this semester but I had only three exams to do, the other subjects results were made up of project work and continuous assessments. We had exams in engineering maths, organic chemistry and engineering physics... The maths exam consisted of questions on differentiation, partial differentiation, integration and differential equations, the maths exam was quiet tricky and had mixed feelings coming out of it, especially when you come out and everyone is talking about it and they're saying 'I did this and that and that's what I got', and I'm feeling, awww I was totally wrong. I'm sure everyone knows that feeling... I was stressed enough about the chemistry exam to be honest, and in the end the paper was still tough but a lot of things Ii had studied came up luckily enough... and I don't really have to tell you what came up because it's title is self explanatory... it still didn't stop me from studying the wrong things... Physics then was as always tricky, with radiation and electricity big questions in it... The other three subjects results were picked up during the year by lab reports, projects and small tests... Well that's what my exams were like and now I want to get back to enjoying the summer... best of luck to people who did exams...



Johnny Twomey

1st Year Chem Eng

Cork Institute of Technology

Finally summer is here and we can unwind a little bit, we just finished our exams for second semester a week ago. They were the usual mix of some were OK and some were tough but we got through them in the end. I'm looking forward to getting back to work and earning some money, the only thing stopping me now is a broken hand, and by the way it was not alcohol related as i have been continuously accused of from my friends, "Johnny, just admit it, you were drunk and you fell! Its OK we've all had accidents when we were drunk..."... its just easier to say that I was drunk...

Looking back on the the year as a whole I think I made the right choice in this course. I can understand when coming into college that people don't know what to expect or even know what their course is really about, the only advice I would give is that to look into the course and find out what the real fundamental subjects that you will be doing, and if you like them subjects then go for it. I would describe the main subjects in the chemical engineering coarse in C.I.T as firstly maths, then chemistry and then physics, biology and in a different way applied maths. I say applied maths because the real main thing about this course is the ability to use your head without the book in front of you. In first semester we did a load of these, being honest, really weird computer puzzles, and at the time i used to think "what is this all about". But as one of our lecturers explained, he was trying to get us to think for ourselves and to lean how to solve problems in a more systematic logical way. And when i look back on it, i can see that 'thinking outside the box' is very much one of the most important things in chemical engineering. In this course your going to get things that your not going to like, but your going to get that in any course you do. You might be thinking 'aw look at this nerd, he has nothing bad to say, this blog is obviously biased' but its not. I'm just being honest and telling it like it is. You are going to have to open your mind, think for yourself and use books as a reference and a tool not as the final answer. This is what the course is like and what first year was like in C.I.T, if this interests you then definitely go for this course. Its honestly very interesting. Just look through the whynotchemeng website and you will get plenty of information about chemical engineering or better still and read the post graduate's blog and the engineer's blog to find out what their work is like... If you cant decide on what discipline of engineering you want to go into seriously consider chemical engineering because if you don't like it when your in it you can always branch into something else because it is so broad there are hundreds of opportunities for everyone... If you want to ask any questions about chemical engineering in college feel free to email me, I'll answer you honestly... johnny-twomey@hotmail.com



Johnny Twomey

1st Year Chem Eng

Cork Institute of Technology

Remember in my last post I asked the question about the clothes on the clothes line... Well usually on a summers day the humidity would be a lot greater which means that there is a lot of moisture in the air already, comparing to on a winters day where the humidity would be less which would mean that the drying would be better, but this isn't always the case... I could give you a big long nerdy answer but the lads in college would only get a serious laugh off of me...
It's coming to the end of the second semester in college and the pressure is on to get assignments, lab reports and trying to fit in some study. We have finished all our labs at this stage, and when I think about it now I never said anything about physics labs. Personally I liked the physics labs because you could always have a laugh in there with the lads or the lecturer himself, so if you ended up with a boring experiment you could always walk around and annoy someone who was working quiet happily until I came along... We did some interesting experiments in there too, one in particular was one in which we used a Geiger counter and couldn't the amount of radiation from different Beta and Gamma sources... Our last lab in the chem eng labs was an experiment with a cooling tower, where water was passed from a height and we are to calculate how much heat energy the water is using and carry out energy balances, it's hard enough but we all work together in the groups which is good because it's very hard when your trying to figure out the calculations on your own... And back to the assignment I was talking about in my last post, well I'm almost finished now, I was tipping away at it every other day and I should be finished it in before the deadline which would be great because of exams coming up and having to study. I had to figure out how much propane and propylene was in the feed stream, the recycle, bleed and product streams where I end out with 100000 kgs a day of propylene...
I've got the second semester exams in two weeks and we're all stressed, but it has to be done, it's hard to find time for everything when trying to finish off lab reports and assignments and stuff but first year will be over in about three weeks and then working for the summer earning a few notes will be good again...

Johnny Twomey
1st Year Chem Eng
Cork Institute of Technology