The Hypersonic Tomato and Other Adventures of a Solids Processing Class at the University of Michigan

For the last three years, the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan has offered an elective course on solids processing in order to incorporate particle technology into the chemical engineering curriculum. The class is broken into three thematic sections: single particle and bulk solid properties; fluid/solid interactions such as fluidization and pneumatic conveying; and solids processing unit operations (in the style of McCabe and Smith) such as storage, screening, size reduction, etc. The course is filled with real life examples which leverages the 35 years of experience of an industrial practitioner. The speaker would like to share his thoughts on the plusses, minuses, and places for improvement of the course so that perhaps they can be leveraged by other academics considering an introductory class on solids processing/particle technology.