rewrite a 2 page document in your own words

Ahmed Alhmoudi

D6

March 13, 2018

Pre-Reflection

Experiment # 4: Fluidized beds

Full technical laboratory/research report

I am currently enrolled in CHE 352 at Arizona State University that is instructed by Dr. Veronica Burrows and this is my 5th experiment for this class which is about fluidized beds. This full technical report is a requirement for succeeding this class. This report was originally due Tuesday 6th of march, 2018, however this day was during spring break and so it was postponed to a week later 13th of march, 2018. This is my first technical lab report that I’ll be doing for this class. This will be quite a challenge for me since I’ve been dealing with non-technical reports and team reports which requires less work that technical reports.

I started working on this lab report during spring break which is a great start for me since I always procrastinate my assignments and lab reports. This experiment is about fluidized beds and how the fluid flows through at different conditions. For this experiment, I must have some background information about how fluidized beds work and what are the characteristics that will be studied and compared to a theoretical model. The three characteristics are pressure gradient, bed expansion, and incipient fluidization. The contents of these terms will be explained throughout the report. Since this experiment is right after the packed beds experiment, the concepts behind how packed beds flow is very similar to fluidized beds flow, however in the fluidized bed tube the particles in the tube are not fixed as in the packed bed tube. Moreover, the fluid that goes through the bed is air instead of water. Those are the only two differences between those two experiments.

After completing 3 lab reports and two assignments I feel more confident about formatting the reports as per the assignment formatting document that was given to us at the beginning of the semester. For this report I will be using EXCEL to plot and analyze my data for the results section and this shouldn’t take me more time because I’ve dealt with this a few times with my other lab reports. Also, I will be using 3D paint to draw my setup for the experiment to include in the materials and apparatus section.

The particles inside the bed will start moving around at a certain flow rate. This is the incipient fluidization. At this minimum flow rate, there will be a minimum fluidization velocity that will be studied. Bed expansion and pressure drops will also be analyzed later. These characteristics play a big role in packed bed reactors, for example, the minimum fluidization velocity is very important for industries because some industries will require a minimum fluidization velocity in order to achieve fluidization in their bed reactor

Post-Reflection

Experiment # 4: (Fluidized beds)

Full technical laboratory/research report

After completing this lab report I realized that this full technical report was not so bad because I started on this lab during spring break and it was such a great start for me. The due date for this lab is Tuesday 13th of March 13, 2018 which is the week right after spring break. The fluidized be experiment is very important for me as a chemical engineer since many industries nowadays are using these types of processes.

This lab went well for the most part, however I do believe that the ranges of flow rates that were used for both columns were not the best choices, since the initial fluidization starts at the lowest flow rate so we didn’t have another comparison to as where we should point on the plot where the incipient fluidization is. This was a big problem for this part of the analysis. I do wish next time someone who will do the experiment to be very careful about this part of choosing the range of flow rates.

Before starting this lab I wished to know that the range of flow rates can be very dangerous to as where it might mess up all the results section. If the team would do this lab again I would recommend using two columns that have the same packing material but different sizes to compare and contrast between them and see how the size of the tube affects the three characteristics of the bed. Unlike what we did, we used two columns of different sizes and different packing material so we were unable to provide a comparison between those two columns, so we only ended up comparing them to a theoretical model only which wasn’t very fruitful.

I learned a lot about how pressure gradient works in bed reactors and I also learned from my research that bed reactors are extremely efficient in transferring heat and coating a reactant with catalyst. This opens for me many designs of chemical reactors that I’ve never thought about. This helps me think about my reactor design class in a much better way.

I am sponsored by an oil company and this experiment is a very fruitful experiment for me since PBR are widely used in those fields pf chemical engineers. Full technical reports are very tiring and time consuming. I see no value in writing these reports in such details to help us be better chemical engineers because in many companies the work field is very different to what we are doing and they are focused on many other things that are hand-on related and how to operate those machines and so on. Our jobs will most likely not have us write 20 page reports every week about what we work on. I believe that ASU must reconsider the system of how this class works. It is true that some of the experiments done in this class are very important, however there are many other ways to teach about how these experiments and machines work than to just let students “explore” how to run an experiment. If I was a professor, I would definitely remove the pre- and post-reflection part since I see no value at all in these reflections.

To conclude this lab was quite interesting and I wish that I pass this class this semester because I am a very bad writer and I am pushing myself to the limit at each lab report by not sleeping at all and having a bad habit of buying fast food all the time because of these reports. Much love and god bless.