Nit Warangal, Department Of Chemical Engineering Golden Jubilee Celebrations

Dear All,

It is heartening to note that the contribution of "Cheresources" to the global chemical engineering community is being recognized all over including academic institutions.

National Institute of Technology (NIT), Warangal, is one of the premier engineering institutes of India providing bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees in the field of engineeering, technology and management.

NIT Warangal is a federally funded institute by the Government of India and ranks among the top fifteen technological institutes of India. For more details on NIT Warangal, refer the following link:

http://en.wikipedia....ology,_Warangal

It recently (March 13-14) concluded a national level student's conference named "ChemFlair" conducted by its Department of Chemical Engineering on the occasion of completing 50 years from its inception.

It was a singular honor for me, to be invited as a Chief Guest on this occasion as a practicing chemical engineer. The chemical engineering department of NIT-W has a very distinguished faculty with most of them holding Doctoral degrees from premier engineeeing institutes of India such as IITs and from top notch universities in the United States.

Since it was a undergraduate student's conference, chemical engineering undergraduate student's were invited from all over the country to participate in discussions, give presentations, participate in Q&A sessions and various technical quizzes.

I made a presentation titled "Phases of Process Design Engineering" from the perspective of an engineering consultant and contractor. The idea was to give the undergrad's a bird's eye view on the practical aspects of engineering when working in a business environment of engineering, procurement and construction of chemical process plants.

The interaction with the faculty and the student's made me realize that at the undergraduate level student's are quite unaware of practical business scenarios involving engineering of a chemical process plant and my presentation helped them in clearing quite a few gaps in their understanding. One another aspect that I could make them understand about engineering design was implementing a safe and environment friendly process design. While most of them were aware of Process Flow Diagrams, Process Modeling and Simulation, Heat and Mass Balance, P&IDs, Process Datasheets, Equipment Sizing, almost none of them had awareness of safety studies conducted during the engineering design phase, such as HAZID, HAZOP, SIL etc. For many of them, my explanation on the safety aspect of engineering design was a revelation.

During the inaugural address and while being introduced to the particpant's of the conference, I was understandably delighted to see the "Community Index" page of "Cheresources" and "Ankur's Blog" being displayed on the screen. It was good to see that "Cheresources" contribution to our community was being acknowledged by the academia.

While many of the younger generation of internet savvy student's were aware of "Cheresources", they had only gone through the forums on a very superficial basis. After my interaction with them, many of them expressed their desire to increase their involvement with "Cheresources".

To conclude, it was a great honor to be part of the student's conference organized by one of the premier engineering institutes of India and more so to interact with the younger generation of engineers and would-be engineers who will guide the future of chemical engineering in the years to come.

Would love to hear comments from the readers of my blog.

Regards,
Ankur.