Students get hands-on with chemical engineering at IChemE’s DiscoverChemEng Live event

CHEMICAL AND PROCESS ENGINEERS from industry and academia gathered in Rugby for IChemE’s DiscoverChemEng Live event, introducing around 400 secondary school students to the fundamentals of the profession – one cookie at a time.

AstraZeneca, Severn Trent, Welsh Water and drinks manufacturer Britvic joined IChemE staff to mark Tomorrow’s Engineers Week and showcase the breadth of industries employing chemical engineers, as well as the research and innovation shaping those sectors.

In a shift away from presentations and discussions, IChemE took a fresh approach to student engagement, developing activities themed around engineering disciplines, including wastewater treatment, brewing and infrastructure design.

“There is a lot of activity going on here today and the level of engagement with students has been outstanding,” said IChemE president Raffaella Ocone. “We are really showcasing a wide variety of activities where chemical engineers play an immediate role.”

Sinking ships and cookie mining

The activities were not what many students might associate with chemical engineering.

Taking inspiration from last year’s Big Bang on Location, the IChemE team – led by Jo Cox, head of young people’s engagement, and schools and colleges engagement officer Victoria Speed – created an obstacle course of challenges.

One exercise tasked students with building a vessel from a single 10 cm² sheet of tin foil that could hold as many 1p coins as possible before sinking. Designs varied widely, with the most robust managing to support 79 coins.

Another popular activity, facilitated by design and construction specialists PM Group, involved “cookie mining”. Designed to reflect the challenges of lithium extraction, product purity and waste management, students were scored on how many chocolate chips they could remove from a single cookie while generating the least crumb waste. Many found the task far harder than expected – including the reporter.

In a simulation

Students also explored the growing importance of AI and digital technologies. Using a VR headset, they remotely operated a batch reactor located at the University of Nottingham.

John Turner, associate professor at the university, said: “Chemical engineers do not sit next to a rig to operate it. We are normally in a portable cabin somewhere, hopefully with the air conditioning running. I want students to understand the tactile and sensory difference between being next to a practical operation and actually operating it from a distance.”

Academic understanding

Universities including Swansea, Oxford and Teesside also exhibited. Swansea University demonstrated hydrogen research using a bike that students pedalled to generate kinetic energy. Around 10 V of energy was channelled into two processes: one converting kinetic to electrical energy and back again to power a toy car and the other converting kinetic to chemical energy to produce hydrogen bubbles.

Farhah Khan, a chemical engineering student in her second year at Swansea, said: “We want to show how a renewable energy source can be used to make different types of energy and how it changes in the process.” The bike drew so much attention that even IChemE president Ocone insisted on having a go.

Local routes and beyond

Many attendees came from local schools in Rugby, and with companies such as Britvic and PM Group present, IChemE aimed to highlight the engineering innovation happening on their doorstep.

The Mayor of Rugby, Cllr Barbara Brown, who also joined in the activities, said: “This day has really opened my eyes for what chemical engineering has done for the world. Rugby has engineering in its DNA and we need to make sure that keep building on that and not exporting them out, so let’s get our young people engaged.”

IChemE deputy president Ollie Folayan called the event “inspirational” and hopes to see similar events replicated across the Institution’s membership.

He said: “We as chemical engineers are famous for taking experiments and scaling them up, so I would like to scale this up. That means replicating it in other parts of the country so that we can create an environment where, in no time, we’ll see an increase in chemical engineers.”