Chemical Reaction Engineering is a central course in any chemical engineering curriculum. It is however, considered by many students as a subject hard to master. A main obstacle for the students is the use of differential equations to describe phenomena about reactions, mixing, and mass transfer, happening inside reactors. The connection between what happens in reality and the link with mathematical descriptions is often difficult to imagine.
Rene Bos and I have written a textbook: Multiphase reactors – Reaction engineering concepts, selection, and industrial applications (DE GRUYTER, Berlin, 2024), in which all important chemical reaction engineering phenomena, such as reaction rate, residence time distribution, and mass transfer, are explained by pictures, metaphors and industrial examples, rather than by mathematics.
I, Jan Harmsen, will deliver a keynote lecture about this alternative teaching approach at CHISA; the Chemical Engineering conference, Prague, 25-29 of August 2024. It would be nice to meet you there and have a conversation.