Undergraduate Calendar 2011-2012
Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
Laboratories & Equipment
Departmental Laboratories
Materials Science and Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Nuclear Science and Engineering
Computer Resources
Departmental Laboratories
The departmental laboratories are located in the Sawyer Building, Modules 4 and 5. They are equipped for teaching and research in the areas of chemistry, materials science, environmental sciences, chemical and materials engineering, environmental engineering as well as nuclear engineering relevant to the course of study and to defence interests. More specifically, they include the following:
Materials Science and Engineering
Materials selection for engineering applications and determination of the chemical, physical and mechanical properties are the foci of study. High temperature furnaces are used in the preparation and treatment of metals, alloys and ceramics while an injection molder is among the tools employed in the area of polymer blends and with composites. Atomic absorption, IR, FTIR, and NMR spectrometers together with gas and liquid chromatography, gel permeation chromatography and viscometry are used in chemical analysis. X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, metallurgical and polarised-light microscopy, hardness, shear and tensile testing are used to determine physical properties. The various materials are also characterized by thermal gravimetry, by adiabatic and differential scanning calorimetry, and by differential thermal analyses.
Chemical Engineering
The chemical conversion of natural or synthetic materials into useful engineering products together with their management and maintenance are the foci of these studies. Various experiments, most of which are computer controlled, demonstrate typical operations involved in chemical engineering. Heat transfer is studied using a variety of heat exchangers commonly used in oil refineries. A packed bed adsorption unit demonstrates removal of obnoxious trace gases from a valuable product stream an application typical in pollution control. The design of chemical reactors is the objective of another experiment. A benchscale heat pump provides a study in applied thermodynamics.
Nuclear Science and Engineering
The main tool for nuclear studies is the SLOWPOKE-2 research reactor, which is operated by this Department for the Department of National Defence. Experiments include neutron activation analysis, neutron radiography and isotope production applied to various military problems. Related experiments deal with health physics, radiation protection, liquid scintillation counting, reactor physics and thermal hydraulic studies. The SLOWPOKE-2 Facility serves professors, students, researchers and technical trainees, and provides other capabilities such as radiation detection and low-level counting.
Computer Resources
Computing infrastructure consists of 300+ networked personal computers, laptops and desktop computer modelling/programming workstations. The software available to these systems include:
- Choice of any Microsoft application or programming language product (due to our departmental site license)
- National Instruments Labview Professional Development System (department site license)
- Honeywell Unisim - Process Modeling Software
- Comsol - finite element analysis and solver software package
- MathLab - mathematical computation and visualization software
- Maple 10 - programming language for symbolic algebra and high-precision decimal integer and floating-point arithmetic.
- SigmaPlot - technical graphing software
