Pilot Plant gives hands-on experience to undergrads

On a busy fall day in Dupuis Hall, Steven Hodgson and Kelly Sedore speed by and disappear into the Pilot Plant. With more than 500 undergraduate students making use of the facility each year, it’s no wonder they’re moving fast.

As chemical technologists in the Department of Chemical Engineering, they provide advice to students on equipment, maintain and set up laboratory experiments, monitor safety, and work with faculty to develop new experiments.

Hodgson, who has been with the Department of Chemical Engineering for more than 27 years and is a champion of hands-on learning for engineering students, has been a driving force in the Pilot Plant’s transformation.

“Over the past 10 to 15 years, we’ve spent close to $1 million on renovations,” Hodgson says. “We’ve been fortunate that the Department of Chemical Engineering has had the resources to make improvements, done a little at a time when money became available and needs arose.”

Looking out over the 460-squaremetre lab from an upstairs window, Hodgson and Sedore are justifiably proud. “When I came eight years ago, the lab was dark and dingy,” Sedore recalls.

“Now, we have new benches, the floors have been treated with epoxy, the walls have been repainted for the first time in 40 years, and there’s new HID [high-intensity discharge] lighting,” says Hodgson. “The whole facility has been modernized.”

As well as upgrading the facility, he adds, the department has purchased new unit-operations-type equipment. This includes a distillation column, a cooling tower, kinetics reaction equipment, a heat exchanger, and process control and thermodynamics experiments.

As well, the vertical tube evaporator was recently rebuilt. This enables a popular troubleshooting project: students attempt to run an experiment, and then must determine why it’s not functioning and make repairs.

Ongoing improvements have made a significant impact on student learning— and the work continues, says Hodgson. “We have a long-range planning committee that considers how to improve space and how space is used.” Current tasks include consolidating labs. “We have four rooms under renovation.”

Asked which part of the modernization they’re most proud of, the two colleagues glance out a window overlooking the lab. “The whole thing,” replies Sedore.

“Yes, the big picture,” Hodgson says with a smile.

Students Eric Donders and Anna Kosmacheva measure the specific gravity of a liquid.

Equipment/features list:

Armfield-TH5: expansion of perfect gas Armfield-HT30X: heat exchanger Gunt-CE300: ion exchange Armfield-CEXC: chemical reactor

Gunt-WL320: cooling tower Gunt-CE60: distillation

QVF: verticle tube evaporator DR Sperry: plate and frame filter press General Foods: air lift fermenter

H2 Economy: fuel cell test station

Chem Eng: biofilm Gunt-CE 380: fixed bed catalysis Quasar- SRV02: inverted pendulum Gunt-RT040: temperature control

Students and technicians work together in the Pilot Plant.