Using a Readily Available Commercial Spreadsheet to Teach a Graduate Course on Chemical Process Simulation

Chemical process simulation is one of the most fundamental skills that is expected from chemical engineers, yet relatively few graduates have the opportunity to learn, in depth, how a process simulator works, from programming the unit operations to the sequencing. The University of Calgary offers a "hands-on" postgraduate course in Chemical Engineering that gives students an opportunity to learn about how a simulator works, by building their own, fully functioning process simulator. This paper describes the organisation of the course, construction of a chemical process simulator using VBA, as built into Microsoft [R] Excel as the programming platform, the assessment of student progress and finally, and it evaluates the course format from both the instructor and the student point of view.