Product Review

A Companion in Chemical Engineering (CinChE) is designed to aid students in the development of their critical thinking skills as an engineering problem solver. The creative problem-solving methodology emphasized in CinChE provides a general framework in which to solve any type of well-defined engineering problem involving material balances, phase equilibria, and energy balances. It is a systems strategy that heavily uses the mental processes of decomposition, chunking, and pattern matching, and it is specifically designed to enhance students’ higher-order thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The CinChE methodology is more systematic than the problem-solving strategies found in most textbooks for the introductory course on chemical engineering, like "Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes" (Felder and Rousseau, 2005), "Basic Principles and Calculations in Chemical Engineering" (Himmelblau and Riggs, 2004), or "Introduction to Chemical Processes: Principles, Analysis, Synthesis" (Murphy, 2007). Many of the example problems presented in the CinChE manual are similar to ones found in the Felder and Rousseau textbook, but their solutions are based on the problem-solving methodology emphasized in the CinChE manual. Because the CinChE manuscript was compiled using Adobe Acrobat®, it contains many popup notes and web links. Using a supplied web address and Acrobat Reader®, students can electronically view the popup notes and access the web links that appear in many of the graphic organizers and example problems of the paper copy. The popup notes provide valuable information to help clarify the content within a graphic organizer or an example problem. The web links access text files, E-Z Solve files, Excel® files, Aspen HYSYS® files, and “.pdf” files. Students can view but not copy or print the electronic version of the CinChE manual.