Christopher G. Arges, Darrell Velegol, Matthew L. Jordan
{"title":"E-Chem Education: A Crash Course in Electrochemical Engineering for Caustic Soda Plant Design","authors":"Christopher G. Arges, Darrell Velegol, Matthew L. Jordan","doi":"10.1149/2.f04233if","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The capstone chemical engineering senior process design course at Penn State in spring 2023 tasked students with designing a caustic soda process to partially meet the global demand for commoditized sodium hydroxide. This article disseminates our experience teaching senior chemical engineering students the core tenets of electrochemical engineering in a single class period for designing an electrolytic caustic soda process. In this E-Chem Education article, we relate key concepts found in chemical engineering (such as sizing up a reactor volume), which chemical engineering seniors are adept with, to electrochemical engineering principles (e.g., current density, voltage, and membrane electrode assembly area) for sizing up and costing out a chlor-alkali electrolyzer. Furthermore, we also discuss alternative electrolyzer designs outside the traditional chlor-alkali process, such as oxygen depolarized cathode (ODC) chlor-alkali and bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BPMED), for caustic soda production and the pros and cons of the alternative process designs.","PeriodicalId":47157,"journal":{"name":"Electrochemical Society Interface","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Electrochemical Society Interface","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1149/2.f04233if","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"ELECTROCHEMISTRY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The capstone chemical engineering senior process design course at Penn State in spring 2023 tasked students with designing a caustic soda process to partially meet the global demand for commoditized sodium hydroxide. This article disseminates our experience teaching senior chemical engineering students the core tenets of electrochemical engineering in a single class period for designing an electrolytic caustic soda process. In this E-Chem Education article, we relate key concepts found in chemical engineering (such as sizing up a reactor volume), which chemical engineering seniors are adept with, to electrochemical engineering principles (e.g., current density, voltage, and membrane electrode assembly area) for sizing up and costing out a chlor-alkali electrolyzer. Furthermore, we also discuss alternative electrolyzer designs outside the traditional chlor-alkali process, such as oxygen depolarized cathode (ODC) chlor-alkali and bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BPMED), for caustic soda production and the pros and cons of the alternative process designs.