Chemical Engineering

The course is practically oriented, and students work in project groups with the different concepts/change management methods before seminars and with a major project work together with a company (or other organization) during the course. A significant part of the course is made up of literature seminars, where the students actively discuss and analyze research articles in the field.

This course provides individual research training for students in the Junior Year Engineering Program through the experience of belonging to a specific laboratory at Tohoku University. Students are assigned to a laboratory with the consent of the faculty member in charge. They participate in various group activities, including seminars, for the purposes of training in research methods and developing teamwork skills. The specific topic studied depends on the instructor in charge of the laboratory to which each student is assigned. The methods of assessment vary with the student's project and laboratory instructor. Students submit an abstract concerning the results of their individual research each semester and present the results near the end of this program.

This course contains fundamentals of homogeneous and heterogeneous reaction engineering processes. The basic concepts of chemical kinetics, reactor behavior, and catalysis are introduced and applied to the design of isothermal and non-isothermal reactors.

The Individual Research Training Senior (IRT Senior) Course is an advanced course of the Individual Research Training A (IRT A) course in the Tohoku University Junior Year Program in English (JYPE) in the fall semester. Though short-term international exchange students are not degree candidates at Tohoku University, a similar experience is offered by special arrangement. Students are required to submit: an abstract concerning the results of their IRT Senior project, a paper (A4, 20-30 pages) on their research at the end of the exchange term, and an oral presentation on the results of their IRT Senior project near the end of the term.

This course provides research training for exchange students. Students work on a research project under the guidance of assigned faculty members. Through a full-time commitment, students improve their research skills by participating in the different phases of research, including development of research plans, proposals, data analysis, and presentation of research results. A pass/no pass grade is assigned based a progress report, self-evaluation, midterm report, presentation, and final report.

This course provides individual research training for students in the Junior Year Engineering Program through the experience of belonging to a specific laboratory at Tohoku University. Students are assigned to a laboratory with the consent of the faculty member in charge. They participate in various group activities, including seminars, for the purposes of training in research methods and developing teamwork skills. The specific topic studied depends on the instructor in charge of the laboratory to which each student is assigned. The methods of assessment vary with the student's project and laboratory instructor. Students submit an abstract concerning the results of their individual research each semester and present the results near the end of the program.

This special lab course nurtures international students' creative competency by offering them opportunities for learning in communities of research practice. The student's supervisor arranges the research topic. Students give three oral presentations during the study period. In the presentations, students integrate ideas and analyses on laboratory results into creative and academically coherent work. FrontierLab program coordinators and supervisors attend and evaluate the final oral presentation.

The course covers hydrogen as an energy carrier, how to produce it, and how to store it. The role of hydrogen in future energy systems is discussed. Electrochemical conversion in batteries and fuel cells is described and analyzed. All major transport processes, such as momentum, heat, mass, ion and current, and thermal management issues are presented. System integration is described. Properties and characteristics of energy-relevant materials and their role in electrochemical devices are treated. The relevance of energy systems and the transportation sector is discussed. Various engineering problems are presented.

In this course, students cover contemporary safety and environmental concerns as they impinge on the practicing engineer, the legal and regulatory background to engineering activity, to ensure safe operation of hazardous processes, and the procedures to be followed in seeking a license from the environmental protection agencies for the operation of processes involving prescribed substances. Generation, propagation, and the fate of pollutants discharged to the air, to water, and to the ground are discussed along with means of mitigating emissions by elimination, substitution, and pre-discharge treatment are considered. Methods of identifying process hazards are introduced leading to risk assessment and consequence analysis using hand calculation methods are presented to allow risk assessment and its application to the process industries to be appreciated.

This course emphasizes hands-on laboratory experience and teaches students research background, relevant theories, and basic laboratory techniques relevant to their field of study. Students formulate a research plan, implement it by conducting experiment-based research, and convey the results in scholarly presentations. Students submit a written research report at the end of the course.