Abstract:

The chemical engineering profession has a common background in chemical processes, systems analysis, and in systems economics. Chemical engineering training occurs through course and laboratory work, addressing mathematical, scientific, and engineering fundamentals. With a strong background in mathematics, chemistry, and physics, chemical engineering students acquire knowledge in transport phenomena (the description of momentum, heat, and mass transfer in chemical processes), chemical kinetics and reaction engineering, process control and design; and optimization of chemical processes. These subjects are widely applied in the traditional chemical industry, but they can be also useful in other industries such as electronics manufacture and biological and biochemical engineering. The employed tools to achieve this knowledge include sophisticated scientific experiments, the latest developments in computing, and large scale pilot plants.
In order to adapt to the European Higher Education System, it has been necessary to update the way of teaching in the Spanish University, to the new degree-based structure, Specifically, Chemical Engineering grade studies started in the Complutense University (Madrid-Spain) in 2009. When teaching a new course, developing a good set of instructional materials can be a challenging, time-consuming task. In this paper we present how moodle platform and visualization software can be used as a common platform to integrate modular teaching. We hypothesize that such an integrated approach will help students to better appreciate the interconnectedness of the knowledge acquired in different modules of Heat Engineering, such as convection and radiation, shell and tube heat exchangers, thermal conductivity, etc which, in turn, will also stimulate their interest in this new teaching approach.

Keywords:

Chemical engineering, heat engineering, integrate modular teaching, practical learning.