(31g) Steps of International Engineering Challenge

The Chemtech International Engineering Challenge 2009 aims to disseminate knowledge of advanced technology to students at South America's top universities. The number of engineering projects is growing as never before that motivates CHEMTECH to train engineering students in crucial areas from process industry, contributing to their development, improving their acceptance in the labour market, and guarantying the availability of better professionals to the industry. In 2008, the National Engineering Marathon included Computational Fluid Dynamics and Process Control Theory, two important engineering areas. In this year, the scope of the competition involves Process control analysis and thermodynamics. This challenge was organized in three steps: call for the contest, training of the attendees and the contest itself, which take place during the 10th International Symposium on Process Systems Engineering (PSE'09). During the first step, CHEMTECH invited the best Brazilian universities and five South American universities, each one represented by their best students and an advisor professor. In the next step comprises two phases: Conceptual Design and a Web Course. The students should submit conceptual designs proposing economically feasible solutions to some of the typical problems encountered in Brazil's natural gas production chain. The challenge is to draw maximum profit from the Gas Processing Units. During this time, they will be trained through the internet using the methodology of Distance Learning. This training also gives the students an opportunity to be in contact with real industrial applications. In the end of this step, a time with two students from each university will be qualified for the final contest. During the PSE'09, they will have to solve a real industrial problem using the learned tools. Their solutions will be evaluated by professionals from CHEMTECH and from some of its remarkable clients. Beyond the knowledge and recognition, the winners will receive prices and their University computers donation. Moreover, CHEMTECH is contributing to improve South America engineering and quality of projects in world process industry.

Keywords: Multidisciplinary Engineering Competition, Process Control Theory and Thermodynamics.