(54b) Increasing Chemical Engineering Students’ Awareness of New out-of-Textbook Safety Topics

Many chemical engineering programs have a safety course based on chemical process safety topics using the Crowl and Louvar textbook. However, there are new out-of-textbook safety topics which chemical engineers may encounter and should be aware of due to rapidly changing technologies. For example, cyberattacks on chemical plants are a newly growing issue. Therefore, cybersecurity is an important new area of focus for chemical plants requiring added attention. Chemical engineering students may also have careers in the energy or semiconductor industry, which have different safety aspects from typical wet chemical or petroleum plants. The safety course of the Chemical and Biomedical Department of the University of Missouri provides a chance for students to be exposed to these new topics through case study report and presentation. Students in small groups are assigned one of the incidents related to these topics to write a report and present on in class. They are asked to analyze the case which critical decision led to the incident based on the decision matrix [CEP Magazine (2020) July p47]. Through this practice, students gain more awareness of broad range of safety issues. We present a list of the incident cases used in class and discuss the efficacy of these projects for the education of students.