The experimental composition of a conventional chemical engineering program's Unit Operations Lab is primarily comprised of the standard heat and mass transfer equipment as well as fluid flow. As departments have begun to embrace and incorporate the biological aspects of the discipline into their undergraduate curriculum, several experiments related to this area have been developed as well. However, only a few programs around the country have the necessary lab equipment to introduce the basic concepts of process safety. Given the importance placed upon this area by the chemical industry, more effort should be expended to introduce the concepts of relief system design and the experimental techniques employed to obtain the design data.

Design of a relief system involves the consideration of several fields: single and two-phase fluid flow; heat transfer; and possibly reaction kinetics. Hence, the introduction of an experiment related to relief system design would not only introduce the students to concepts important to this area, but would also challenge their use of the fundamental concepts in combination. Introduction of equipment used by industry professionals to obtain design data would also give students valuable experience in its use.

We have recently introduced a new experiment using the Advanced Reactive System Screening Tool (ARSST) available from Fauske and Associates, Inc. The ARSST is one of many tools available for screening chemically reactive systems to measure the potential for thermal runaway. Its predecessor, the Reactive System Screening Tool, was developed to address needs outlined by the Design Institute for Emergency Relief Systems (DIERS) program. Data obtained from the unit can be directly applied to the design of relief systems on large equipment. By using the ARSST, we have found that the chemical system studied can be readily changed each semester with minimal effort. There are ample examples of reactive chemical mixtures available from the literature. Some of these systems exhibit remarkable adiabatic thermal decomposition profiles, which capture student interest when they are asked for quantitative characterization.

An overview of the experimental methodology students are asked to follow along with results from different reactive chemical mixtures will be presented.