The steps that are required to build comprehensive mathematical models are examined. These steps include: definition of the intended model use; formulation of model equations; determination of model parameters from correlations and experimental data; parameter sensitivity and estimability analysis; solution of model equations using numerical techniques; model validation; and potential model applications. While the focus is on the development of fundamental and semi-empirical models, empirical modeling techniques are also discussed. Students complete a mathematical modeling project related to their research interests, and are expected to have taken undergraduate courses in differential equations, statistics and reaction engineering. This course is aimed at students working in a variety of research areas where mathematical models are important. Process examples are selected from: reactive distillation, heat transfer, polymerization,bioreactors, reformers, and fuel cells.

K. McAuley

Chemicals of potential concern and their effects on human health and the environment are investigated. Principles of quantitative risk assessments are presented – including hazard identification, dose-response assessment, exposure, and risk characterization – in the context of regulations and applications in environmental engineering practice, addressing issues facing all stakeholders.

Location: DUP 311
Wednesdays 1:00 - 4:00pm

L. Meunier

This course is designed to appeal to students in all fields of this interdisciplinary field, from biomechanics to polymer chemistry. It will provide a thorough background in the underlying fundamental biological and polymer science principles involved in the use of polymers as medical materials. Topics include surface and bulk polymer properties, applications of polymeric biomaterials, the biological principles that dictate host response to a material, and biopolymer degradation.

Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor.

K. De France

This course is designed as a graduate level introductory course in tissue engineering: the interdisciplinary field that encompasses biology, chemistry, medical sciences and engineering to design and fabricate living systems to replace damaged or diseased tissues and organs. Topics to be discussed include: tissue anatomy, basic cell biology, cell scaffolds, cell sources and differentiation, design considerations, diffusion and mass transfer limitations, effects of external stimuli, bioreactors, methods used to evaluate the engineered product(s), and implantation. Case studies of specific tissue engineering applications will also be discussed. Students will be required to participate in, as well as lead, discussions on the course material and relevant journal articles. No previous background in biology is required.
Three term hours.

L. Fitzpatrick

Graduate students working on theses must give a seminar on their research. Graduate students enrolled in this course must attend the seminars. Grading is a Pass/Fail.

For M.Eng. students only, this is a course which involves a laboratory research project. Students are expected to find a professor to supervise them in a laboratory-based project within their research group. The student receives two course credits (6 units) for successful completion. Grading is a Pass/Fail.

This course will examine the fundamental chemistry and processes of polymerizations conducted in aqueous and non-aqueous dispersions. Students will understand the motivation and incentive for producing polymer in dispersed media, the types of product one can make and the relationship between process operation and polymer structure.  Emphasis is placed on reactor design, process chemistry, and issues related to industrial production such as characterization and scale-up.

(1.5 units)

Location: DUP 311
Tuesdays: 1:00pm - 2:30pm 
Thursdays: 10:30am - 12:00pm

M. Cunningham

This 6 week (3 hours/week) module will provide in-depth coverage of microscale transport phenomena motivated by the emerging fields of Microfluidics and Lab-on-a-Chip. During this course, students will intensify and expand their knowledge of the fundamentals of heat, mass, charge and momentum transfer with emphasis on microscale geometries. The difference of macro- and microscale transport phenomena and the limitation of classical mechanics will be highlighted by scaling analysis. Additionally, an introduction into the fundamentals of selected electrohydrodynamic phenomena will be given.

D. Barz

This 6 week (3 hours/week) module will provide an overview on the latest developments, fabrication

techniques, and principles of operation of contemporary micro- and nanotechnologies used in lab-on-chip (LOC) type platforms. Small-scale subunit operations required in LOC systems, equally relevant across several disciplines in both life sciences and engineering fields, will be covered in detail. The knowledge acquired in these topics will be used during the last part of the course to analyze the design of LOC-based systems in key applications in different areas including biosensing, biotechnology and emerging energy technologies.

C. Escobedo

PREREQUISITE: none; (1.50 units)

This course will help learners from across engineering develop an entrepreneurial mindset capable of turning problems into opportunities. Learners will investigate the relationships between innovation and industrial dynamics, and seek to understand the fundamental forces that drive the science and technology industries’ evolution and industry life cycles. (Booked w/CHEE410)

J. McLellan

Applied sustainability is the application of science and innovation to meet human needs while indefinitely preserving the life support systems of the planet. This course provides an overview of the field with particular focus on implementation of engineering solutions. The course will be divided into four sections in which the technical and policy‐related issues will be explored: 1) Sustainable Energy Technologies, 2) Sustainability and Fresh Water Systems and 3) Sustainable Resource Management and 4) Implementation of Policies to Enable Technology Transition.

The course consists of a series of lectures related to each of the technical areas by professors from Mechanical, Chemical, Civil and Mining Engineering as well as a module specifically on Policy. The lecturers are experts in a range of sustainable technologies.

B. Peppley

Basic concepts, generalized control volume analysis and balance equations. Constitutive equations, kinetic models, thermodynamic considerations, and prediction equations for transport properties. Coupled transport processes: Onsager's theory; forced diffusion; and thermo-chemical, thermo-electric, and electro-chemical effects. Special phenomena in biological and macromolecular systems. Phenomena at surfaces. Effects of flow and chemical reaction. Analogies between energy, material and momentum transport. Examples in the analysis of complex problems.

J. Giacomin

The course will examine the design of fuel cell systems for a variety of applications ranging from large multi-megawatt stationary power systems to milliwatt scale portable electronics systems. Examples will be drawn from actual demonstration and pre-commercial prototype systems operating on a range of fuels including conventional hydrocarbons with integrated external fuel processing subsystems, anaerobic digester gas with external clean-up and preprocessing, natural gas fuelled systems with direct and indirect reforming, direct methanol fuel cells and hydrogen fuel cells. The design of combined heat and power systems (CHP) for large scale industrial applications and for small-scale residential applications will also be examined. In each of these case studies the impact of system configuration and individual component performance on efficiency will be examined and strategies for optimizing performance and minimizing complexity will be developed. In addition, the effect of system design on greenhouse gas emissions will be considered. The course will consist of three design projects of increasing complexity and a final examination. Students will be expected to give a presentation on their final design project.

Researchers at Queen's and visiting professors will present selected topics in advanced process control, including control of distributed parameter systems, control of bioprocesses, control of polymer reactors, and hybrid systems.

This is a second course in process control techniques. Topics covered will include: frequency response methods for stability analysis and controller design, deadtime compensation (e.g., Smith predictor), feedforward/ cascade control, the Internal Model Control formulation, introduction to multivariable control, and interaction analysis using the concept of relative gain. Specific applications to chemical processes will be presented.

M. Guay

X. Li

PREREQUISITE: Permission of the instructor

The fundamentals of polymerization kinetics are reviewed. The equations for batch and continuous flow reactors are developed and used in the calculation of polymerization rate and polymer quality measures. Process parameters which affect reaction rate, chain composition and molecular weight distribution are examined, and the design of polymer reactor systems is discussed. Consideration is also given to the problems of reactor design in heterophase polymerization.

R.A. Hutchinson

The fundamentals of transport phenomena and reaction kinetics are considered and applied to fuel cells, with a view to a mechanistic understanding of fuel cell operation and limitations.  Material covered includes the basic axioms of mechanics (conservation of mass, momentum, energy and charge) presented in indicial notation and applied to porous media.  Emphasis is placed on the description of porous materials and the implications of porous media on transport, including the notion of effective transport coefficients.  Ion transport in solid and polymer electrolytes due to electrochemical potential differences is considered.   Diffusion models covered include Fick's law, Stefan Maxwell and Knudsen.  Electrochemical reaction kinetics and mechanism are covered including rate-limiting steps, exchange current density and the fundamental definition of over potential.  The course will include individual projects.

Bioremediation as an option to treat contaminated soils, ground water, fresh water and the marine environments. Advantages and disadvantages of bioremediation compared to nonbiological processes. Factors affecting choice of in situ or ex situ processes. Assessment of biodegradability; biostimulation vs. bioaugmentation; mineralization vs. partial degradation; factors affecting microbial activity (choice of electron acceptor, toxicity of pollutant, C/N/P ratio, co-substrates, soil humidity, pH and temperature); bioavailability of pollutant. Biodegradation of specific contaminants (eg. diesel fuel, polychlorinated biphenyls, dyestuffs, aromatic and polyaromatic hydrocarbons) will be studied in detail.

L. Meunier

The course surveys recent advances in Biochemical Engineering, through lecture material and seminars based on recent published advances, critical analysis and in depth review of recent published literature, academic and industrial guest speakers outlining advances in their respective research areas and through student presented seminars on assigned papers or topics.

This course will focus on applied cellular and molecular biology for the development of cell-based therapeutics in regenerative medicine. Emphasis will be placed on how engineering principles can be applied, in combination with an understanding of mammalian morphogenesis and physiology, to control and manipulate cellular responses in vitro and in vivo.

Rheology provides a valuable tool for the assessment of the processability of polymers in various operations, as well as the identification of their structure. This 6 week (3 hours/week) module will discuss the fundamental relations between the rheology and structure of polymers and the principles of rheometry.

(1.5 credit unit weight)

J. Giacomin.

This course is intended to help the student to understand how the fundamentals acquired in CHEE 828, are used in the design and operation of melt or solution polymerisation processes of different types (chemistries, operational modes, etc.) Emphasis will be placed on reactor design and operation, but separation technology for product purification will also be studied. Case studies of specific commodity polymers will be used to illustrate the important concepts.

(1.50 units)

Various established theories on Colloids (e.g., DLVO, XDLVO) will be analyzed and subsequently used as tools towards the understanding and prediction of phenomena relevant to contact angles, surface wetting, emulsion or particle dispersion stability, and surfactant self -assembly.(1.5 credit units)

 A. Docoslis

(1.5 units)

This course provides an in-depth examination of selected topics in colloids of great interest to sciences and technology, such as emulsion stability, adsorption, particles electrokinetics and light scattering. In-class discussions and presentations, literature reviews, and individual projects, will provide graduate students with the solid fundamental knowledge and critical thinking required to approach problems related to these phenomena in a rigorous manner. This is not intended to be an introductory course in Colloids. Prior knowledge of Colloids and Surface Science principles is required. 

A. Docoslis

(1.5 units)

This 6‐week course introduces global optimization principles and methods for nonconvex continuous or mixed‐integer programs, which can arise from a wide range of process systems engineering problems. The course consists of three parts. The first part discusses convex sets, convex functions, and Lagrangian duality theory. The second part introduces classical branch‐and‐bound based global optimization methods, along with convex relaxation and domain reduction techniques. The third part gives an overview of decomposition based large‐scale global optimization. This course, although placed in the Department of Chemical Engineering, is designed for graduate students from across Queen’s University.

PREREQUISITES: CHEE 827 or permission by the instructor

(1.5 units)

This course is an introduction to learning principles and effective teaching in engineering, intended to prepare for roles like teaching assistant, university course instruction, or training in engineering industry. The course includes relevant theories of teaching and learning with practical elements like classroom management, designing sessions and assessments, signature engineering teaching approaches, and using digital pedagogies.

P. Hungler