Introduction to Chemical and Biological Engineering Analysis –An Initial Condition for Teaching Transfer Science and Reaction Engineering

The material balance is debatably the single most defining characteristic in the chemical engineering curriculum.  While other disciplines must comply with material balance, none obsess over the concept quite like chemical engineering.  Teaching this subject, however, is a great opportunity to introduce much more than the concept of mass conservation alone.  Classic approaches avoid the introduction of calculus there-by overlooking an opportunity to connect the concepts of mass balance to transport phenomena.  Rather, by beginning with an integral form of the macroscopic equation of mass continuity, students not only obtain all necessary skills to solve macroscopic mass balances but also develop an initial condition (a starting point) for studying transport phenomena.  This calculus based approach has been found to be very helpful at producing student outcomes wherein a fundamentals-based approach to transport phenomena is a programmatic thread that links mass continuity to transport processes and reaction engineering.