Chemical Engineering with a Year Abroad

Modules shown are for the current academic year, and are subject to change depending on your year of entry.

You take a pathway of core modules in the first year, as well as two mini-design projects:

• one on the scheduling of maintenance and repair work on a pressurised-water reactor power station
• one on the synthesis of a heat exchanger network for a solvent manufacturing plant

Key aims in these projects are success in definition and solving of the problem, and also experience of working in groups.

• Business for Engineers 1
  (Business Ethics for Chemical Engineers)
• Chemistry
• First Year Design Project
• Fluid Mechanics 1
• Foundation Laboratory
• Heat and Mass Transfer
• Introduction to MATLAB
• Mastery for Engineers 1
• Mathematics 1
• Process Analysis
• Properties of Matter
• Separation Processes 1
• Spring Test
• Thermodynamics 1

In the second year you take another pathway of core modules in addition to design projects:

• for a catalytic reactor – students must write their own computer program to size the reactor in order to achieve a specified conversion
• for control of a furnace for heating a crude oil stream – students use an existing real-time simulation package

• Biochemistry
• Business for Engineers 2
  (Economic Evaluation of Projects)
• Fluid Mechanics 2
• Heat Transfer
• Industrial Chemistry
• Knowledge Laboratory
• Mastery for Engineers
• Mathematics 2
• Pilot Plant Project
• Process Dynamics and Control
• Reaction Engineering 1
• Reactor Design and Control Project
• Separation Processes 2
• Thermodynamics 2

You typically spend this year at a partner university abroad unless you are on the exchange in France, the Netherlands or Sweden.

The main difference from the standard course (H801) is that language tuition will normally be substituted for some topics. If you are fluent in the language on entry, you will be expected to follow the standard course prior to going abroad.

For those destinations where instruction is in a foreign language, you will have to demonstrate a satisfactory level of proficiency in French/German/Spanish six months before the planned start of the year abroad. You will also be expected to have maintained at least a 2:1 degree standard academically for any of the exchange destinations.

There is competition for the limited number of exchange places to the USA, Australia, and Singapore. You are therefore not guaranteed a place on these exchanges even if you are enrolled on the Year Abroad course.

The modules to be taken at the partner university will closely match the course structure of the third year undertaken by students at Imperial.

In year 4, you have the choice of over 20 optional modules, which you take alongside two projects.

You complete an advanced research project at Master's level over one or two terms.

You undertake a major project covering all aspects of the design of a chemical plant. These aspects are:

• the synthesis of a process
• detailed design of key units
• plant control (including start-up and shut-down procedures)
• plant safety and layout (including environmental impacts of the plant);
• development of a sound business plan

You choose six of the below optional modules.

• Advanced Bioprocess Engineering
• Advanced Process Operations
• Advanced Process Optimisation 1
• Biochemical Engineering
• Carbon Capture and Clean Fossil Fuels
• Colloid and Interface Science
• Downstream Separation in Biotechnology
• Dynamic Behaviour of Process Systems
• Dynamical Systems in Chemical Engineering
• Introduction to Nuclear Energy
• Long Research Project
• Membrane Science and Membrane Separation Processes
• Modelling of Biological Systems
• Molecular Modelling of Fluids
• Nuclear Chemical Engineering
• Nuclear Materials I
• Nuclear Reactor Physics
• Nuclear Thermal Hydraulics
• Pharmaceutical Process Development
• Process Heat Transfer
• Product Characterisation
• Transport Processes in Biological Systems

You may choose one of the below modules within your optional modules.

• Business for Professional Engineers and Scientists
• Imperial Horizons
• Inter-Departmental Exchange