Engineering Commons^™

Tuning The Structural Properties Of Cellulose Acetate Thin Films: A Demonstration Of Confinement And Antiplasticization In Cellulose Acetate Butyrate, Keegan Reece Parkhurst

Graduate Theses - Chemical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Decolorization Of Reactive Blue 4 Dye By Fenton Process Using Heterogeneous Fe/Sba-15 Catalyst, John C. Overton

Graduate Theses - Chemical Engineering

Remediation of textile wastewater, particularly concerning dyes, has been a longstanding concern. With the rise of more stringent regulations, the study of advanced methods of waste treatment is becoming necessary. The objective of this study was to synthesize and observe the use of a heterogeneous catalyst in a Fenton reaction by doping an SBA-15 catalyst support with iron. The catalyst was successfully synthesized, was easily filterable, exhibited resistance to acidic environments, and showed thermal stability. When used in a Fenton’s Reagent reaction setup, the single trial use of the catalyst achieved a final dye conversion of 86.8% at the optimal …

Application Of A Light Switchable System In Redirecting Escherichia Coli Metabolic Fluxes, Xintong Xia

Graduate Theses - Chemical Engineering

Optogenetics has gained increasing attention for enabling reversible and non-invasive control in biochemical engineering. The purpose of this project is to investigate the application of a genetically engineered light-switchable system, Cph8-OmpR, for controlling the accumulation of the useful central metabolite glucose-6-phosphate (G6P) in Escherichia coli. This could be accomplished by linking expression of an adaptor protein, SspB, which increases enzyme phosphofructokinase (Pfk) degradation, with different light intensities. Pfk is the enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of fructose-6-phosphate (F6P), an isomer of G6P from an equilibrium reaction, to fructose 1,6-biphosphate for downstream metabolism. This step is considered the major control point …

Current State Of The Assets In The Chemical Engineering Laboratory At Rose-Hulman Institute Of Technology And Their Use In The Undergraduate Laboratory Course Sequence, Matthew Adams

Graduate Theses - Chemical Engineering

The Chemical Engineering Laboratory, also referred to as the Unit Operations (UO) Laboratory, is integral to any undergraduate Chemical Engineering curriculum as it provides students with the opportunity to gain practical and hands-on experience with processes that are commonplace throughout industry. The Chemical Engineering Department at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology prides itself in providing its students with a practical education that will allow for an easy transition into industry as well as continued success throughout the students’ careers; as such, the assets in the Chemical Engineering Laboratory space and their use are paramount to this objective. The Chemical Engineering Department …

Adsorption Kinetics Of Bovine Serum Albumin To Strong Anion Exchange Adsorbents: Application Of The Pore Diffusion Model To Resins And Membranes, Sarah Catherine Jensen

Graduate Theses - Chemical Engineering

The replacement of traditional bead-based chromatography by membranes has gained recent interest in the bioseparations industry. However, membranes have drawbacks such as lower binding capacity that make them unrealistic for some applications. The goal of this work is to compare the adsorption kinetics of anion exchange bead-based resin and membranes both on a theoretical modeling level and experimental level. Bovine serum albumin (BSA) was adsorbed to Q Sepharose FastFlow resin and Sartobind Q membrane to obtain adsorption equilibrium characteristics and kinetic data. A numerical solution was used to fit the pore diffusion model to the data and estimate a pore …

The Influence Of Relative Particle Size And Material Interactions On The Flow-Induced Detachment Of Particles From A Microchannel, Morgan Brittany Mayfield

Graduate Theses - Chemical Engineering

Particulate transport in microfluidic channels is difficult due to confined geometries and low flow rates, which promote solids settling. To re-entrain these solids, the detachment behavior of closely-fitting particles from microchannel walls must be understood. Experiments were completed to examine the effects of particle size and material interactions on particle detachment velocity. Studies were conducted for various sizes of glass and poly(methyl methacrylate), PMMA, spheres in glass and poly(dimethyl siloxane), PDMS, microfluidic channels. In addition, an inexpensive method to produce monodisperse PMMA microparticles was developed. To analyze the effect of material interactions, the work of adhesion between the particle and …

Asset Management Model For An Industrial Process Automations System In The Chemical Engineering Unit Operations Laboratory At Rose-Hulman Institute Of Technology, Megan Elaine Liebman

Graduate Theses - Chemical Engineering

In the Chemical Engineering curriculum, the Unit Operations (UO) Laboratory is recognized as the place where hands-on exposure to industrial practices occurs. Students not only examine fundamental engineering principles, but also gain knowledge of the intricacies of modern control technology. The UO Laboratory at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology houses an industrial state-of-the-art distributed control system, which operates eleven large-scale experiments and interfaces with approximately two hundred process instruments. The size and complexity of the distributed control system and its associated equipment have grown over the past ten years and have reached a point where a systematic asset management approach is …

The Effect Of Assembly Technique On Weak Polyelectrolyte Multilayer Film Morphology And Humidity Swelling/Deswelling Behavior, Ziyang Yin

Graduate Theses - Chemical Engineering

The goal of this research is to investigate the film morphology and humidity swelling/deswelling behavior of polyelectrolyte multilayers (PEMs) that are constructed from poly(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH) and poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) by two assembly techniques: automated dipping layer-by-layer (LbL) and spin-assisted (SA) LbL. Two sets of pH polyelectrolyte solution conditions were tested: (PAH7.5/PAA3.5) and (PAH7.0/PAA7.0). It was found that when the films were constructed with the same number of bilayers (=20 bilayers), SA-LbL (PAH7.5/PAA3.5) has a greater thickness than (PAH7.0/PAA7.0). (PAH7.5/PAA3.5) thin films constructed by automated dipping LbL did not result in a uniform film morphology, making thickness comparisons between techniques …

Combining Monte Carlo Transport And Level Set Surface Evolution For Modeling Vapor Phase Deposition Of Thin Films Over Sub-Micron Features, John Lewis Smith

Graduate Theses - Chemical Engineering

A hybrid scheme is used to model the vapor phase deposition of thin films at the feature scale. The transport of the chemical species to the substrate surface is modeled with a Collisionless Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. The Level Set Method is used to model the growth of the thin-film on the substrate. The convergence criteria for these methods were not found in literature.

The governing equations for the Level Set Method are, in general, non-linear partial differential equations. The coupling of the DSMC Method with the Level Set Method results in a set of non-Gaussian stochastic non-linear …