Energy Balance on an e-Cigarette Device

Authors

  • John D Clay
  • Eric Collins

Abstract

Generating a problem that addresses multiple course learning objectives can be a challenging, but worthwhile exercise for a professor.  These types of problems are particularly useful late in a course to help students tie together seemingly disparate concepts to solve an integrated problem that requires them to review concepts mastered throughout the course.  Relating the problem to something that the student experiences on a day-to-day basis enhances the utility of the problem. This submission provides an overview of one such problem, an energy balance for an e-cigarette device.  The submission includes a problem statement, key parameters from device measurement and literature surveys, and a worked out solution.  This problem is intended for use in the Mass and Energy Balances course typically taught to sophomore chemical engineers.  It reinforces key topic areas and integrates mass and energy balances with vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE) to demonstrate how a real world problem can be tackled using appropriate assumptions.

Author Biographies

John D Clay

John Clay is a clinical faculty member in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at The Ohio State University.  In addition to teaching at Ohio State, he is a consultant at Battelle Memorial Institute, a contract research organization.  He has a passion for teaching and enjoys watching his students grow as they progress through the chemical engineering curriculum.  His goal is to develop technical arrogance in his students, giving them the technical building blocks and confidence to attack new and unknown problems.

Eric Collins

Eric Collins started his Chemical Engineering degree at Ohio State in 2014.  He learned incredible problem solving skills as well as conceptual thinking skills.  He was heavily involved in the school’s AIChE chapter, where he met a lot of great and supportive people.  After graduating from Ohio State in 2018, he moved out west to work for one of the largest investment management companies in the world.  Chemical Engineering left him fascinated by how take advantage of economies of scale and how to make processes more efficient, which is a great skill set to bring to a financial institution.

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Published

2020-03-30

Issue

Section

Class and Home Problems