ChE Facilities

The following is a description of the facilities of the Department of Chemical Engineering. Most are housed in the Engineering Building (EB). Where appropriate, a room number in the Engineering Building has been listed, and its location may be found on the room locator.

The chemical engineering facilities consist of three undergraduate teaching laboratories (EB 1254, 1273, 2260, 3262, and 3269) numerous research laboratories, several storerooms, and office space for faculty, staff, and graduate students. The Engineering Building is home to most of the College of Engineering. A major renovation of the building, completed in 1997, has allowed us to offer all chemical engineering courses in the building, whereas in previous years some of the larger courses met in more distant locations.

The Department has excellent undergraduate teaching laboratories and is also fortunate to have the people, including a full-time technician, and financial resources to maintain and improve these laboratories.

The Engineering Library (EB 1515) in the main engineering building houses a variety of useful journals, texts and references works to support the undergraduate program. Several large study rooms are available for student project group meetings as well as individual study carrels, most of them equipped with outlets for student computers and calculators. In addition, the Division of Engineering Computing Services (DECS, EB 1338)) plans, installs and maintains the undergraduate computing resources for the College of Engineering.

Descriptions of Individual Laboratories

Unit Operations Laboratory

Description of laboratory. The unit operations course, CHE 316, is a required course in the curriculum and thus must accommodate up to 100 students per year. The laboratory consists of four rooms on two floors encompassing a total of approximately 2500 ft². There are currently 13 equipment stations in the unit operations laboratory:

All of this equipment is in good working order, and we have devised over 40 separate student experiments that use this equipment. Three of the experiments use computers for data acquisition and control. In the lab, students work in groups of three on an experiment for five laboratory periods of three hours each; students conduct five experiments over the course of the semester. We can in principle accommodate 39 students per section with 13 experiments (117 students per semester). Upon completion of the course, students are able to operate chemical engineering process equipment, collect, model, and analyze engineering data, work in teams (both in the lab and in writing), write clear, concise laboratory reports, and make oral presentations of their work.

Polymers and Composites Processing Laboratory

Description of laboratory. The Polymers and Composites Processing Laboratory is designed to teach students the relationships among processing variables, microstructure and mechanical performance of molded polymer products. This lab and the bio lab (described below) serve as important links between our undergraduate program and research activities. This laboratory has the following major items of equipment.

The first three pieces of equipment serve to illustrate different types of molding or manufacturing methods. The next three are used to illustrate the characterization of thermal and rheological behavior of the materials used. The optical microscope is used to illustrate comparisons of microstructure obtained with different molding methods and processing conditions. Finally, the last instrument is used to illustrate the effects of process induced microstructure on mechanical performance of the product.

Biochemical Engineering Laboratory

Description of laboratory. The Biochemical Engineering Teaching Laboratory (BETL) was opened about six years ago to give chemical engineering students hands-on experience with processes that are commonly used in the food, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology industries but are not included in the Unit Operations laboratory. The lecture component of the Biochemical Engineering course emphasizes the application of traditional chemical engineering concepts to non-traditional, interdisciplinary technology areas.

The 2300 ft² BETL, housed in 3263 and 3269 Engineering Building, is the result of a recent capital-campaign investment by the MSU Engineering College and Chemical Engineering Department, as well as matching equipment donations from several companies and the State of Michigan vaccine production facility. Fermentation equipment in the laboratory includes a 100-gallon, a computer-controlled, pilot-scale fermenter, a 14 L New Brunswick Microferm bioreactor, three 1.5 L New Brunswick Scientific Bioflo IIC computer-controlled fermenters, and two 1 L New Brunswick Multigen fermenters. A fermentation miniplant recently donated by the Dow Chemical Company is now being installed in the BETL. The miniplant consists of four rack-mounted, 14 L New Brunswick Microferm bioreactors, with accessory equipment for controlling temperature, pH, oxygen concentration, agitation rate, and foam level.

MSE Laboratory Highlights

Materials Science students access a wide range laboratory equipment in their educational programs. Both undergraduate and graduate students grain hands-on experience in classes and research projects. Undergraduate students take a number of laboratory courses that teach practical applications using state of the art equipment. Students then apply many of these techniques to their MSE 499 Senior Research projects. Graduate students make use of many of the same facilities to carry out research in a wide variety of externally funded programs.

Hitachi H-800 200 kV transmission electron microscope (TEM) operated by graduate student Ben Simkin. This instrument, which is used for imaging the structure of metals, ceramics, polymers, and electronic materials at magnifications up to 300,000X is introduced in MSE 375 and used extensively in MSE 870.	James Corgan using a Scintag x-ray diffractometer for his MSE 451 project. This instrument is used in many studies for determining the structures of materials.
Rockwell hardness testing, being carried out by Amy Gray and Brian Bratney, is used to assess the properties of materials in many courses including MSE 250, MSE 375, MSE 376, MSE 466 and MSE 499 Senior Research Project.	A R.J. Lee Personal scanning electron microscope (SEM), being used by Amy Gray, is sited in the department's undergraduate material laboratory. This instrument, equipped with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) capabilities for chemical analysis, is dedicated to undergraduate student use. Students in many courses, including MSE 250, MSE 375, MSE 376, and MSE 466 make extensive use of the instrument.
The department's undergraduate lab has recently upgraded its optical microscopes, including digital image capture facilities. Here, Catherine Silwinski uses a Nikon Eclipse transmission/reflection microscope to study her failed component for her MSE 466 projec	Adwait Telang loads a sample in to an Instron mechanical test frame. This computer controlled system is used by both undergraduate and graduate students for testing the mechanical properties of materials.
Sara Pschigoda uses a Hitachi S-2500 C scanning electron microscope (SEM) for her senior thesis research. This instrument is equipped with an EDS system with windowless x-ray detector for light element analysis.