By Vvon Engineering Team | Published | Updated
Specifying a chemical engineering teaching laboratory in Bangladesh: the unit operations and reactor experiments that matter, chemical storage and segregation, fume extraction and exhaust treatment, and a waste route decided before the first experiment runs.
Scientific & laboratory RFQ checklist (TXT)
Chemical engineering laboratory planning must include the output of every experiment: spent solvent, aqueous waste, solids and exhaust. List each waste stream, its segregation and approved disposal route beside the equipment and utility requirements.
Chemical engineering is the most demanding teaching laboratory to set up properly. It combines the drainage problems of a fluids laboratory, the heat and instrumentation of a thermal laboratory, and a chemical inventory that carries real risk.
Build the equipment list around the operations a graduate must have handled physically. Simulation covers the design calculation; the laboratory covers what the calculation does not tell you, which is that packing channels, that a filter cake cracks, and that a column takes a long time to reach steady state.
| Operation | Experiment | Notes on the rig |
|---|---|---|
| Fluid flow and particles | Pressure drop through fixed and fluidised beds, minimum fluidisation velocity, bed expansion | A unit such as the EDIBON LFFC computer controlled fixed and fluidised bed unit covers this cleanly |
| Mechanical separation | Plate and frame filtration, sedimentation and settling rate, centrifugal separation | Messy; needs floor drainage and a solids disposal route |
| Size reduction | Crushing and grinding, sieve analysis and particle size distribution | Noisy and dusty; site away from analytical work. Retsch covers the step with the BB 200 jaw crusher, the SM 300 cutting mill, the PM 100 planetary ball mill, the RM 200 mortar grinder and the TM 300 drum mill and Bond index tester |
| Mixing | Power consumption of an agitated vessel, mixing time, effect of baffles and impeller type | Modest utilities, high teaching value per taka |
| Heat transfer | Concentric tube, shell and tube and plate exchangers; parallel and counter flow | Shared with the thermal laboratory if the timetable allows |
| Evaporation | Single effect evaporation, boiling point elevation, capacity and economy | Needs a heat source and condenser cooling |
| Distillation | Batch distillation, continuous column with reflux, number of theoretical stages, effect of reflux ratio | The flagship rig; tall, needs headroom, cooling water and time |
| Absorption | Gas absorption in a packed column, mass transfer coefficient, flooding and loading | Needs a gas supply and an exhaust route |
| Liquid-liquid extraction | Extraction in a packed or agitated column, distribution coefficient, stage efficiency | Solvent inventory and a waste route are part of the purchase decision |
| Adsorption and ion exchange | Breakthrough curves, regeneration | Select compatible adsorbents, regenerants and operating conditions; a BELSORP instrument can characterise the adsorbent separately |
| Drying and humidification | Tray drying rate curves, cooling tower performance, psychrometrics | Cooling tower is best sited outdoors or at a window |
Size reduction is the one row where the grinding and the measurement have to be bought together: an AS 200 control vibratory sieve shaker for the sieve analysis, and a CAMSIZER X2+ particle size and shape analyser or the S3500 particle size analyser where the practical needs a full distribution rather than a set of retained masses. If the budget forces a choice, protect distillation, heat exchange and fluidisation. Between them they cover mass transfer, energy transfer and particle mechanics, and every one of them maps onto an industry in Bangladesh that hires these graduates: textiles and dyeing, fertiliser, cement, pharmaceuticals, sugar, edible oil and food processing.
Reaction engineering laboratories fail in a specific way. Students run a prescribed reaction, take samples at prescribed times, and produce a rate constant that the demonstrator already knew. Nothing about reactor behaviour has been learned. The fix is to build the laboratory around comparison rather than around a single reaction.
Choose teaching reactions through a documented chemical risk assessment. Even familiar saponification reagents require compatible handling and a waste route. Reagent quantity and analytical method should be selected for both learning and safe operation.
A teaching laboratory accumulates chemicals faster than it consumes them, because every project buys a bottle and every project ends. Within a few years there is a cupboard of unlabelled containers that nobody will take responsibility for, and disposing of it costs more than it cost to buy.
On sourcing: some reagents are readily available in Dhaka and some are not, and the ones that are not can hold up a semester. Check local availability once for every reagent your experiments depend on, and for anything that has to be imported, order a full year's requirement in one cycle rather than repeating the paperwork.
A fume cupboard is a ventilation system with a box on the front. Departments buy the box and then discover that the system was the expensive part.
Select Honeywell MIDAS gas detection from the target gases and the site assessment. Specify the model, compatible cartridge, sampling points and alarm response before quotation. VVON’s Honeywell offering is MIDAS only.
Write the waste route into the experiment sheet itself, next to the method. If an experiment cannot state where its output goes, it is not ready to run.
Departments serving the food, dairy and pharmaceutical sectors increasingly want pilot-scale equipment, and it is a different proposition from bench work. A pasteurised milk, yogurt or milk powder pilot plant introduces hygienic design, cleaning in place, product contact materials, batch records and a genuine scale-up question.
The practical requirements are floor loading, headroom, a hygienic floor and drainage that copes with cleaning chemicals as well as product, a hot water or steam source, and secure storage for the cleaning agents. Decide whether the plant is a teaching asset or a small production facility, because if any product will ever leave the building the food safety obligations change entirely, and that decision belongs to the institution rather than to a keen lecturer.
A usable chemical engineering laboratory joins the experiment, utilities, safety controls and waste route in one reviewed plan.
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