The effective teaching of membrane processes is an important issue to be addressed by the academic community. Leading-edge industries are using membrane technology for new gains in processing. Students need training in this rapidly growing field. Educational initiatives are crucial to the continued technical growth and wide-scale commercialization of membrane processes. The development plan involves the innovative use of membrane technology, integrating it both vertically and horizontally throughout the engineering curriculum and expose students from other disciplines to it through the use of team-oriented experimental projects in multidisciplinary engineering clinics. The experimental areas addressed are hands-on lecture and small-scale mini labs for Freshman Engineering. Students will be introduced to membrane separation principles laying the foundation for more advanced experiments. The integration of membrane process experiments for multidisciplinary team projects will be integrated into the Junior and Senior level Engineering Clinic courses. These realistic and challenging experimental projects will examine topics including reverse osmosis system design and function in water purification, gas permeation processes, membrane bioreactors and membrane gas transfer for environmental control, pervaporation systems for solvent recovery, cerarnic membrane reactors used in petrochemical processing, and the analysis drying in hollow fiber production. In these projects students will learn how to function in a team to solve complex problems, interpret and analyze data, utilize modern technologies, and understand environmental issues. The experimental experience will greatly benefit students in related coursework. To broaden the impact of the project, the Rowan team will also use membrane technology to help attract high school students to engineering through the development of innovative demonstration modules. We also plan to develop new educational methods and share them with faculty from 2-yr colleges to research universities.
