A survey of thermodynamics and transport properties in chemical engineering education in Europe and the USA

Abstract

Thermodynamics and Transport Properties (TTP) is a central subject in the majority ofchemical engineering curricula worldwide and it is thus of interest to examine how TTP istaught today in various countries. The contents and the organization of the courses reflectan understanding of reality (or philosophy) which often is not explicitly expressed. Thediscussion about different learning styles (cf., e.g., [1]) and their implication on teachingmethods has also spurred us to investigate which methods are used for thermodynamicsteaching, especially as thermodynamics often is regarded as a difficult subject. Ourultimate aim is that our results will help to improve chemical engineering education.A survey of graduate thermodynamics education in the USA only was performed a fewyears ago by Visco et al. [2]. As far as we know no systematic study of the undergraduatethermodynamics education has been performed, at least in recent years. In the presentstudy, a survey about TTP education in both undergraduate and graduate programs inEurope and the USA is presented. Answers from 136 universities from twenty differentEuropean countries and the USA were collected and used for this study. This study wasperformed under the auspices of the Working Party of Thermodynamics and TransportProperties of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering.