Chemical engineering undergraduate lab tour

Dr Chris Chuck takes us on a two minute tour of our chemical engineering undergraduate lab facilities, including an introduction to the basic techniques and equipment you could be using as part of your degree.

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Transcript. Dr Chris Chuck:

This is our undergraduate lab, this is where we do all our practicals. Where you could be looking at growing organisms such as algae or yeast, doing chemical reactions in a range of different reactors, or doing separations where you separate out the products that have been formed and purify them so they can be used.

Microalgae wastewater treatment

In this experiment, you'll be growing algae in a continuous culture to clean wastewater of phosphate and nitrates which leads to eutrophication.

Second generation bioethanol production

Another type of bio-transformation you'll be working on is yeast. This is an industrial style fermenter. You’ll learn how to run this and how to grow the yeast which can produce bioethanol, a second generation biofuel.

Absorption column

The other key part of chemical engineering is how you separate the products. We have a range of labs to show you the different techniques which are used. One of the ways is to use an absorption column which absorbs your key compound, the compound that you’re after, on to a inert material.

Reverse osmosis separation

Another key separation is desalination. Turning salt water into fresh water, removing the salt. This is our reverse osmosis membrane and this is a technique that’s used all over the world to produce fresh water from salt water.

Distillation column

We have a distillation column to distil out compounds which have a different boiling point. This is a key separation in most chemical processes.

Plug flow reactor

A key part of chemical engineering is learning all the different reactor types you can use to do chemical reactions. This one is a plug flow reactor where you can do a reaction very efficiently.

The assembly station

Finally, you can put everything together, to simulate the workings of a real chemical plant on the assembly station.

By using all of this state of the art technology, we give you the very best foundation to becoming a true chemical engineer.

Find out more about the University of Bath on our website at https://www.bath.ac.uk/