Our Accomplishments

The above pictures are pictures of data collected by out group during the time spent in the Laboratory. The data provides a link from math to Biomedical Engineering and the data was given in a form of a chart when a drop of liquid taken from the distillation column is put through the Gas Chromatograph.

 An Example of the Report.

(Last 2) Photos Taken By: Grace Tan Soo Woon 
— The Universal Truth

Our Presentation Slides

Our Mission

We are learning about industrial distillation by observing and operating a pilot plant, which is a working scale model of a large-scale distillation column. We have to learn how to operate the various parts of the distillation column to obtain the desired concentrations of the liquids. We also study how different factors affect the end result by changing some settings on the distillation column via a control panel. Our objective at the end was to adjust some of the settings to obtain the desired distillate from a mixture of different substances given to us at the beginning.

Our Gains (Understanding how to operate a pilot scale distillation plant)

Distillation, by definition, is the separation of two or more liquids and the key principle of it the different boiling point of the certain liquid(s). As different liquids have different boiling points, they vaporise at a different temperatures and the vapor phrase is created from the liquid phrase by vaporization at the boiling point. The vapor is then condensed by cooler tap water and then depending of the reflux ratio, the resulting liquid is either transferred back to the reboiler or either the accumulator The reflux ratio setting in the machine then determines how much distillate goes back into the distillation column or goes directly into the overhead product which the final product. And basically the break down of how the distillation set up is operated. However, the purity of the distillate is directly dependent on three factors, namely the rate of feed entering the distillation column, the reflux ratio and the temperature of the reboiler. Each of these 3 factors are indirectly interlinked with each other, as for example should the rate of feed entering the distillation column is too much and the reboiler is not able to heat up the entire feed completely and that the liquid would not be able to vaporize completely, the situation can be rectified by increasing the heat of the reboiler so it would be able to heat up the feed to able the liquid to vaporize.

Overview of Project 4

Our group will be working on distillation, and through this experiment, we hope to investigate the steady state distillation of a binary mixture under continuous operation and the effect of reflux ratio on the performance of distillation columns. Besides that, we wish to lean how to measure the chemical composition using a gas chromatography and to learn how to operate the distillation column based on product requirement. In order to achieve our objectives, we will be carrying out a procedure using the distillation column with different conditions with each try to be able to obtain the required results.

—The Universal Truth

( Typed by group member: Grace Tan Soo Woon )

Our Team

Our team comprises of six members altogether. The leader is Joshua Loh, who has been affectionately dubbed as "the guy with the universal truth", the origin of the team name.

The group members are as follows:

From S2-01:

Cheng Zhi Chao

Grace Tan Soo Woon
Oh Sher Li

From S2-06:
Tai Chen Yu

From S2-08:
Zhang Bo