Creating a Winning Final Year Design Project

Glen McClea and Campbell Tiffin were part of the team that won the 2023 IChemE Australia and New Zealand Student Design Prize. Here, they provide a comprehensive guide to undergraduates on how to create a successful final year project

IN A SIMILAR way to how you might approach a design project in your professional career, the final year project is designed to bring together all the course knowledge and skills taught in lectures and apply them to a real-world problem.

This might include working in a group to design a process to make methanol from biogas, facilitating safe drinking water in a remote location, or even overhauling the production of maple syrup. Considerations will include the engineering process along with feedstock and process selections, mass and energy balances, control strategy, project economics, process safety, environmental impact, and community engagement.

At first glance, the design project can appear broad and daunting, with most people left wondering where to start. We would know. In 2022 we were assigned a design project titled “Renewable Hydrogen from Biomass Resources” with two other students. While designing a process for converting biomass to hydrogen might seem straightforward to typical chemical and process engineering students, our project had a unique challenge. We were required to incorporate a novel approach of coupling the water gas-shift reaction and the hydrogenation of toluene to methylcyclohexane to improve reaction kinetics and store hydrogen in a liquid organic carrier for intercontinental export. This made the design more complex and suitable for a final year project.

After countless design iterations (much to the team’s despise) and Aspen HYSYS® simulations, we had completed our design and handed in our executive report. Following the submission, our design project was nominated for the IChemE Australia and New Zealand Student Design Prize, which we went on to win.

Here is what we learned from our experience:

Technical skills

Scope

The first and arguably most important aspect of your design project is considering the scope of the design. As you begin the design process you will quickly start finding “waste” streams. This is where you are faced with your first major design decision: do you take these waste streams and demonstrate how you can add value to them, or do you leave them as is and just detail how they should be disposed of?

The former may set your project apart from others. However, it may distract you from the actual purpose of your design project. For example, after the water gas-shift and hydrogenation reactions, we were left with a stream that contained a considerable amount of CO2 and hydrogen. While this stream could have just been called a waste stream and vented to the atmosphere, at the time of the project, New Zealand was facing a CO2 shortage which gave us the idea to recover the CO2 through an MEA scrubber and subsequently liquify it using a compressor train.

However, the more unit processes, the more workload. It may look like a couple of unit processes, but those processes require mass and energy balances, heat integration, equipment design, control strategy, and safety considerations. This all adds up to a significant amount of work, so before you decide to implement that unit process, ask yourself if it is worth the extra workload.

Technology selection

Once you have decided on your process scope and unit operations, your next challenge is to choose the appropriate technology/design for each reaction/reactor, separation/separator, and purification method. While for most designs, this is straightforward, where we found issues was with our water gas-shift and hydrogenation reaction reactor. Our supervisor suggested basing the design of our reactor on a fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit, which would allow for continuous catalyst regeneration essential for maintaining high conversion rates. However, this proved to be a massive hindrance in our detailed design of the process, with most of the design of fluid catalytic cracking units being proprietary and protected as trade secrets, thus limiting the technical information we could provide on the design of the process. If you find proprietary restrictions too limiting, we recommend exploring alternative technologies that can achieve similar results while allowing you to strengthen the technical design of the process.

Limitations of design software

The final technical aspect to consider is the limitations of computer-aided design software. A major issue with any computer-aided design software, such as Excel, SolidWorks, and process modelling tools like Aspen HYSYS®, is that they allow you to design for or solve scenarios that may, in practical terms, be impossible. Your instincts are therefore needed to validate the designs.

For instance, in our process, we needed to liquefy CO2 for storage and transport, which required designing a process to compress the CO2 to high pressure to liquefy it. This process can be simulated using HYSYS by simply inputting the required pressure. However, a common trap is that compressing the stream will increase its temperature, sometimes to exceptionally high levels, which requires careful consideration.

While HYSYS can simulate this process, the designer of a reciprocating compressor may encounter challenges. Factors like material selection and the need for gas-tight seals can make the design too expensive. Thus, it is necessary to design for multiple compression stages with interstage cooling. This underscores the importance of validating simulations.

Validation methods can include a gut-sense check, seeking advice from an expert or supervisor if uncertain, reading related case studies, or conducting actual testing/experiments.

Soft skills and organisation

There is a saying in golf, “drive for show, putt for dough”. It emphasises that while eye-catching skills get a lot of attention, it is ultimately the fundamental and less exciting skills that lead to success on a golf course. The same can be said for a design project. Technical drawings, process simulations, and economic modelling are all technical skills that impress. However, finetuning your soft skills is where you can really make a difference as an individual for your team. Soft skills are the personal attributes and abilities that allow you to work effectively with others. It’s these employable skills that can make or break your experience with the design project.

Play to your strengths

Designing a process plant requires a wide variety of skills and knowledge, from process simulation and equipment design to community engagement and economic analysis. Luckily for you, one of the many advantages of working in a team is the diverse ideas, skills, and strengths that each team member brings to the table. It’s important then, to fully utilise each team member’s unique skillset. To do this, you first must identify each other’s strengths. This may come in the form of a discussion at the beginning of the project, or you might find that throughout the project each teammate will naturally gravitate towards what they enjoy and excel at. Regardless of the process, the important part is that you give each other the opportunity to take the lead in areas of individual strength. This empowers each teammate by giving them a sense of responsibility and ownership over an element of the design.

In a group project where every decision falls on a single person, the rest of the group tends to become disengaged and hesitant to contribute. We found implementing this shared approach into our design project created a positive environment that brought the best out of each person. For example, we enjoyed the process simulation (Campbell) and the community and Māori engagement section of the design (Glen). By playing to our strengths and assuming the lead in these areas respectively, we could share the responsibility, while also learning from one another, raising the understanding of the group as a whole. Although these design aspects were vastly different from one another, the decisions made in one aspect would influence the other. So, it was critical for us to stay involved in all parts of the design process and ensure everyone was informed on decisions and how they would impact other areas of the design process.  

Be ready when it matters

Throughout the project, you’ll find there are occasions when you need to be on top of your game. This might be a submission deadline, a meeting, or a presentation. Recognising these high-value moments and preparing for them will give you the best chance of success.

During our design project, we found meetings and feedback from our project supervisors extremely valuable. Whether it was pointing out a flawed approach or giving a nod of approval, this feedback played a big role in shaping our project. To make the most of these opportunities we made sure we were prepared going in. For us, this meant sitting down as a group before our meetings and prioritising the topics we wanted to discuss, and ensuring we had presentable data or ideas to share. Going into the meetings all on the same page, we could utilise this valuable time. We found having two notetakers ensured nothing was missed and our interpretations were consistent. Immediately after the meeting we would have a short debrief, where we highlighted the outcomes of the meeting, set objectives, and distributed the workload accordingly.

Look the part

The design project is your opportunity to demonstrate all the skills you have developed throughout your undergraduate degree. You should view it as the ultimate test before entering the professional work environment. With this in mind, your approach to the project should be professional.

We found that establishing standards early on in the project gave us clear expectations for the quality of our work and how we wanted to conduct ourselves. These standards covered all aspects of the project from document formatting to hitting deadlines and how we communicated with each other. By doing this we removed the awkward expectational grey area that often exists in group projects and could hold ourselves and each other accountable.

Presentations were another aspect of the design project we took a professional approach to. Not being gifted public speakers, we found that small 1% improvements to our pitch led to a more polished performance. For example, we dropped the use of note cards, giving our presentations a more confident appearance. By practicing in the presentation room, we were familiar with the environment and could rehearse utilising the space of the room. We also handed out copies of our presentation material to the audience. By doing this we found our engagement improved, allowing the audience to take notes, analyse figures deeper, and reference the handouts while asking questions. By accumulating these marginal gains, we were able to significantly improve our presentation skills throughout the project.

Weather the storms

No design project goes perfectly. With challenging technical aspects, heavy workloads, and strict deadlines, every design team will experience some sort of adversity during their project. We certainly had ours. It’s these moments that test your team’s relationship. What separates a successful team from a not-so-successful team is how they respond to this adversity. Disfunction in your team when fractures start to appear could spell disaster for your project. It’s crucial then to be resilient and work extra hard on maintaining your team’s morale through these tough patches. Your ability to do this hinges on positive communication.

When we met in the mornings, we made the effort to start off with an optimistic attitude. Whether it was celebrating a completed task, finding a silver lining, or having a bit of a laugh, this gave us a positive mindset for the rest of the day. If you find a negative atmosphere creeping in to your team, make a conscious effort to bring a positive perspective to the first two minutes of a meeting. These first two minutes are crucial because it sets the trajectory for the rest of the interaction. If you start off on the wrong foot, it becomes incredibly difficult to redirect. Both optimism and pessimism are infectious, be mindful which one you are spreading.

Resources

Microsoft Teams

File sharing and collaboration is imperative in facilitating effective teamwork and productivity in a group project. Microsoft Teams allows for easy sharing and storage of files, keeping all the documents in one place and with the integration of Microsoft Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, editing them as well. It also allows multiple users to work on the same document simultaneously, with changes reflected in real-time making sure everyone is up to date and working on the same version of the file.

Reference managers

References provide evidence for the design decisions you have made. However, keeping track of references within a group project can become tricky, especially if you manually input your references in Microsoft Word and store PDFs in folders with unclear names like we did.

Reference managers like Zotero can make this much easier. They allow you to save references from websites and PDFs with a single click, while automatically extracting the important information. Integration to Microsoft Word allows you to simply drag and drop references from Zotero into a document and citations and bibliography are automatically generated. The ability to create group libraries makes this particularly useful in a design project scenario, allowing multiple users to add, edit, and organise references while cloud syncing ensures all users have the most up-to-date libraries. Using a reference manager can take all the hard work out of referencing, leaving you more time to work on other aspects of the project.

Outside expertise

During our project, we were presented with the opportunity to pitch our design to a group of professional chemical engineers and chemical engineering company directors. This was arranged by our university and allowed us to gain insight into the design process from people with years of practice in design and decision making. They were able to point out aspects of the design process that would work from a computer simulation perspective but were not practically possible. This is where we got the suggestion mentioned earlier for using a compressor train versus a single compressor.

To make the most of these opportunities, be sure to have key documents on hand such as copies of your pitch and any supplementary information such as process flow diagrams and stream tables, and other relevant information.

Key takeaways

The technical aspects of undertaking a design project might seem overwhelming but rest assured you’ve spent the last three years developing a toolbox of knowledge and skills to be successful.

Defining the scope of your process will be one of the first and most important decisions you’ll make during the project. Here, finding a balance between comprehensiveness and technical detail is key. Process modelling software is great for doing the heavy lifting of your design but is liable to exceed realistic parameters. Justifying and validating the output of these models will strengthen your case and may save you from embarrassment.

In a design project, a useful resource is worth its weight in gold. Collaborative software such as Microsoft Teams and Zotero will help to bridge the communication gap and keep your team on the same page. Opportunities to engage with technical experts are rare but very valuable. Leverage these opportunities by being prepared and willing to ask dumb questions.

Working well as a team will improve the quality of your work and make the experience so much more enjoyable. The ability to do this boils down to your soft skills. As with all types of skills, your people skills can always be further developed and improved. Challenge yourself to actively work on these skills throughout the project. Take time to reflect on what does and doesn’t get your team working effectively and implement new approaches when you need to. By implementing these strategies, you too can successfully complete a final year design project.