Chemical Separations and Formulations

This course covers the design and optimization of technologies for processing chemical mixtures. Separation and purification technologies are surveyed, including distillation, extraction, absorption, adsorption, filtration, dialysis, reverse osmosis, evaporation, sedimentation, centrifugation, crystallization, and capacitive deionization. Students learn the physicochemical principles underlying separation processes, involving selective phase change, density differences, molecular size exclusion, and electrophoresis. The course also covers the creation of synthetic mixtures or composites important in chemical product formulation using methods such as blending, emulsification, suspension, agglomeration, and encapsulation. Mathematical conservation laws, free energy relations, and mass transport correlations will be developed and applied to industry case studies drawn from this diverse set of chemical mixture processing methods.