Assignment #2
Ethylene Oxide Plant — Level 2 Conceptual Design
Electronic Submission due 6 am September 21, 2016
Context
This assignment will give practice in Conceptual Design Levels 0-2 with emphasis on Level 2. We strongly encourage that you work collaboratively on Task 3 Level 2 Decisions as you can benefit from alternative points of view and the associated discussions even if you don’t make the same eventual decision. However, Task 4 material balance development and associated calculations including Task 5 EP are to be performed and submitted independently.
Learning Objectives
Below is the set of Learning Outcomes for CHE 432; this project addresses the highlighted portion of the Learning Outcomes:
1. Students will be able to apply concepts from previous chemical engineering courses to synthesize processes.
2. Students will be able to analyze chemical processes for economic viability.
3. Students will be able to utilize concepts from conceptual design to minimize work in uneconomical designs.
4. Students will be able to size process equipment based on specified flows and compositions
5. Students will be able to obtain equipment cost for a design
6. Students will be able to develop flow diagrams
7. Students will be able to work in a team environment
Background:
Ethylene oxide (EO) is the simplest cyclic ether. It is quite reactive because its highly strained ring can be opened easily, which makes it one of the most versatile and widely-used chemical intermediates in the Chemical Process Industries. Ethylene oxide itself is used as a disinfectant, sterilizing agent, and fumigant, although these direct product applications represent only about 2% of worldwide production. Ethylene oxide’s most important uses are as an intermediate in production of ethylene glycol and for the manufacture of polyester fibers, with lesser uses as an intermediate in production of other ethylene oxide derivatives, amines, and poly(ethylene glycols).
Your assignment as described further below is to perform a complete Level 2 Conceptual Design and analysis for a commercial-scale process to produce ethylene oxide. The Process Basis is given below, although there is one decision (Task 1) that must be made before it is completed.
Level 0: Process Basis V1.0
Reaction Pathway and Process Window: Ethylene oxide is produced through vapor-phase direct partial oxidation over an alumina-supported Ag catalyst at temperatures from 200 – 300 °C and pressures ranging from 150 to 300 psia through the following exothermic reaction:
C2H4 + ½ O2 ? C2H4O
Undesirable complete combustion also takes place as follows:
C2H4 + 3 O2 ? 2 CO2 + 2 H2O
At sufficiently low conversion (< 40%) and “lean” reactor feed composition (O2 : ethylene < 0.5), the sequential combustion of the ethylene oxide produced from the first reaction is not observed. Small amounts of acetaldehyde (typically less than 0.1%) and even less formaldehyde are also formed; these undesirable byproducts can safely be ignored at the current level of design detail.
In the absence (at this point) of reaction kinetics data, we use an empirical fit of selectivity S to the desired product: EO selectivity is empirically related to the conversion through the following correlation:
S (mol EO / mol ethylene converted) = 0.96 – 0.82 X
for 0.04 < X < 0.40
where X is the ethylene molar conversion.
The supported Ag catalyst is irreversibly poisoned by S-containing gases. Acetylene also acts as a reversible poison through coking reactions. Under normal operation in the absence of poisons, modern commercial catalysts have an operating lifetime of 2-5 years, with gradual activity degradation due to thermal sintering (agglomeration) of the Ag crystallites, which reduces the active surface area available to drive the reactions.
Product Specifications:
13,750 lb/hr Ethylene Oxide 99.97% purity $1.04 / lb
The plant will be designed to operate 8100 hr/yr
Raw Materials Specifications:
99.5% Ethylene (0.5% CH4) (250 psia, 25 °C) $0.27 / lb
99.5% O2 (0.5% Ar) (250 psia, 25 °C) $0.12 / lb
or Air (21% O2, 79% N2) ambient conditions no cost
Task 1
The process can be implemented either with air as the source of O2, or with purified O2 from an air separation plant. Although the reaction pathway is not changed by the choice of air vs. purified O2, this choice will have significant ramifications in process design and ultimately in the economics of the project.
Construct a table that summarizes the point-by-point relative advantages of one approach over the other as you perceive them at this early stage. Based on the entries in your table, complete the Level 0 Design by making the decision: air-based or O2-based process? and succinctly explain your choice.
Task 2
Explain why “Continuous” is the best Level 1 Decision: Batch or Continuous?
Task 3
Complete a Level 2 Conceptual Design of the EO Process. Document your efforts by first presenting the Level 2 diagram that accurately represents your decisions, and then succinctly explain the rationale for all of your decisions in logical sequential order.
Task 4
Construct a Stream Table for your Design of Task 3 as a function of your chosen Design Variable(s). Be sure to clearly document the development of the entries in the table.
Choose one set of quantitative values for your Design Variable(s) and include a table of numerical values as an example calculation in units of lbmol/hr.
Task 5
Determine the Economic Potential – Level 2 (EP2) for your Design. Construct an appropriate graphical summary of EP2 vs. (and potentially as a function of) your Design Variable(s). Discuss the outcome in terms of next steps and any insight gained.
Submission: Due before 6am on September 16, 2016
There are no minimum or maximum page requirements for this assignment. You must follow all of the requirements given in the Assignment Requirement document posted in the folder with this document. If you need to scan in work that is handwritten, make sure it is extremely neat and well annotated (i.e., describe what you are doing!).
Submit through the Blackboard link in a single MS-Word document, in the following order:
1. The Assignment 2 Checklist
2. The Assignment 2 Pre-reflection
3. The Body of the work
4. A references section, formatted using ACS citation format
5. Any Appendices you choose to include.
6. The Assignment 2 Post-reflection
Email submissions will not be accepted under any circumstances. Late work will receive a grade of NC (i.e., zero). Conditions for rework/makeup are given in the Polices & Info portion of the Blackboard site.
Reminder regarding permissible collaboration:
You are required to submit only your own keystrokes – that means that you may not share Excel, Word, or other files containing your work for the assignment.
Preparing and Submitting Assignments
This document takes students step-by-step through the process of preparing and submitting an assignment for Dr. Burrows’ classes.
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Where will I find assignments posted?
Normally, just open the Assignments folder of the course webpage.
Notice that these documents contain a list of assigned tasks or problems followed by a checklist (sometimes the checklist is a separate document).
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• You must follow all format requirements.
• You must complete a pre-reflection and a post-reflection for each submission (see below).
• You must answer all questions and complete all tasks listed in an assignment’s description.
• You must complete the checklist/template provided for each assignment (non-shaded items).
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General Format Requirements
You will encounter format requirements throughout your professional career, and these requirements will vary by organization. This course requires you to follow all of the format instructions below (as well as the table format and plotting format requirements later in the document) for each submission – including assignments, lab reports, projects, reworked exams, and any other submission (the rare exceptions will be identified as exceptions). If you do not follow format requirements, your grade might be decreased, you might receive an NI and be required to rework the assignment, or – if the formatting has severe deficiencies – you might receive an NC and be required to do a makeup assignment. This can seem harsh, but many industrial, professional, and government organizations refuse to even look at documents submitted to them that do not follow every format requirement. You can build a sense of professional skill (and avoid these penalties) if you prepare your work carefully and check that it meets format requirements.
• Print or write hard-copy submissions on ONE SIDE of the paper ONLY. Print computer-generated work in black on white 8½ ? 11-inch sheets, using 10-point or 12-point fonts. Use MS-Word® or a compatible document application for all work except for extensive calculations, which you may usually write out by hand. Prepare hand-written work on either white printer paper or on green or tan engineering computation paper – do not use loose leaf paper or paper torn from a spiral notebook.
• All submissions must have their checklist at the front (checklists are provided for all submissions). Do not change the checklist formatting.
• Staple hard copy submissions with fewer than 10 pages; for hard-copy submissions of 10 or more pages, secure a steel binder clip (typically black, with fold-down handles) in the upper left corner. Please use an appropriately sized clip – normally a “mini-size” clip. Do not use wire or plastic paper clips, as they fall off too easily.
• Type the submission date and the student/team name on the upper right corner of each page (including any handwritten pages) after the checklist page. Assignment files usually come with a template that includes the name, team number and date in the header; you only need to fill them out.
• Page numbers must appear on the bottom of each submitted page after the checklist. Assignment files come with a template that includes page numbering. If you do not use the template, format the footer in your own MS-Word® document to include a page number.
• All work must look neat and readable, and must pass spelling and grammatical error checks; handwritten work must have few erasures and no crossing-out. Hard copy printing must be crisp and clear – I should not be able to tell that your printer is running out of ink or toner. Use printer settings for black and white, NOT gray-scale! Some printers print gray as a combination of colors – you want your grays to have only black ink/toner.
• For a submission that contains a set of problems or tasks, start each new problem or major task on a new page. (This may take some judgment. A major task is normally one that itself requires several pages to complete. Consider a major task as equivalent to a chapter in a book)
• Use a computer to generate all plots and essentially all diagrams. If necessary, make sketches and hand-drawings of any kind (e.g., process flow diagrams) using a straightedge (and other drawing tools as needed).
• Each table, and figure/plot must have a number (e.g. “Table 1: …”), and a descriptive caption (more on this below).
• Complete numerical results require correct signs, correct units, and the correct number of significant digits, in addition to the correct numerical value.
• Use super- and subscripting for quantities and chemical formulas, e.g., 1.15?105 instead of 115000 or 115,000 or 1.15×10(5) or 1.15*10^5 or 1.15e5, and CO2 instead of CO2.
• Use an equation editor for equations, and use the display form rather than the linear form. The Ms Word equation editor is OK, but MathType works much better.
• Give proper citations for all sources used. This includes equations, conversations with the instructor, TA, or classmates (“name, personal communication”), and Internet sources. Cite Internet or print sources as recommended by the American Chemical Society’s ACS Style Guide . NOTE: If you access a source via the Internet that actually exists in print (e.g., accessing the CRC Handbook online edition), you must cite the print version. This is addressed in detail later in this document.
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The Pre-Reflection
Most professions expect their members to engage in self-reflection. Your professor uses the process described here for her research and academic work, and intends that you develop your self-reflection skill, an important component of lifelong learning.
Before beginning an assignment, step outside of the work itself and consider what you’re about to do. Write this pre-reflection in the first person (“I/we think that …”). Imagine the response you might make to someone who asks you what you think about the assignment, after you’ve read it but before you’ve started working on it. Rather than introducing the work, the pre-reflection gives your thoughts about how you plan on doing the assignment. The pre-reflection has much more value if you write it out before actually doing the work. Consider addressing these issues in the pre-reflection:
• Why, when, and for whom you will do the work;
• What purpose the work will serve in meeting your goals and in meeting the instructor’s goals;
• What skills, concepts and factual knowledge you expect to use while completing the work;
• What strengths you plan to draw upon; what weaknesses you know to avoid;
• Preliminary ideas you have about the eventual outcome of the work;
• How this work fits into a bigger picture.
The Body of the Work
This constitutes the core of the assignment, the technical work. What goes into the body of the work varies by assignment, but will typically include the following items:
• An introduction – a brief statement, in your own words – not cut-and-pasted from the Instructor’s handout, of the assignment’s tasks (required for each task). This is required.
• All completed tasks:
o If the work requires numerical answers, show correct units and the correct number of significant digits.
o If the work requires a descriptive answer, present it in complete sentences or paragraphs.
o If the work requires a graphical presentation, show properly formatted drawings or plots.
• A description of your problem-solving process, explaining what you did, how you did it, and why you chose to do it that way;
• A description of your results, the results themselves, and all relevant observations;
• Appropriate tables, diagrams, or sketches integrated within the text, each properly formatted with a table or figure caption;
• Any required or relevant analysis of your results, telling what they mean in the context of the assignment.
(I realize that it is more than a bit ironic that although I require work to be written in paragraphs, this document is presented largely in bullet points!)
If your results include tables or plots then you must discuss them (e.g., What trends do you see? Can you extrapolate beyond the measured or calculated values? Does the theoretical model match the laboratory facts?). Never leave the interpretation of a table or plot solely to the discretion of the reader.
Plots:
The most important heuristic for presenting technical information in a plot:
Maximize each plot’s information-to-ink ratio – if you don’t NEED to use a box, line, color, or shading to communicate something important about the data, or to make the plot easy on the reader’s eyes, then DON’T use them!
(did I NEED to put the above material in a box?)
Additional requirements for plots:
• Plot dependent variables on the vertical (y) axis and the independent variable (time, or the variable that you controlled) on the horizontal (x) axis. Pick the appropriate independent variable.
• Use point markers to show data points when plotting calculated or measured data. When showing a single dependent variable, you should try to plot only points, rather than points connected by a line. Only two reasons justify using lines to connect calculated or measured data:
o 1) to draw the eye through sharp transitions of data, or
o 2) to distinguish multiple data sets on a single set of axes. Use straight lines (never smoothed lines) to connect data points.
• Add trend lines to a plot of data only if you are making an explicit comparison of your data to a model.
• Plot only a line (i.e., no point markers) when plotting a continuous function from an equation/model.
• Label each axis of a plot with the quantity displayed, including its units. If practical, you should use the name of the quantity rather than a symbol or abbreviation (e.g., use Volume, not V).
• Do NOT put a title on the plot itself; all of your plots will have captions below them.
• Choose the scale of a plot to make all important behavior clear. If you must plot items of very different orders of magnitude on the same axes, consider multiplying (or dividing) the values of one or more of the data sets by some factor of ten, in order to have the plots display well on a single set of axes. Clearly indicate that you’ve done this, either in your caption or legend.
• Clearly show the value of the plot origin (intersection point of axes). If practical, the origin of the plot should represent the zero values of dependent and independent variables, unless that would obscure the plot’s behavior (see the previous bullet item).
• Select and show scale divisions on each axis. Choose the number of divisions so as to have the tick marks at ‘natural’ values (multiples of 2, 4, 5, or 10 units), and so that no more than 6 divisions appear on an axis (4 or 5 divisions works best).
• Avoid gridlines. Only use them if absolutely necessary to help the viewer understand your results, or if you expect users to need to read precise values from your plot.
• Avoid color or shades of gray on plots. Nearly all plots should be able to be presented appear clearly and readably if printed in black on white (for hard copy, please try to PRINT them in black and white, as noted above). Do not color or shade a plot’s background.
• When you need to distinguish multiple lines from each other, try differing styles of black line (dashed, dotted) and/or differing point symbols for each variable. Solid point markers usually look good (circles, triangles, squares), unless they overlay each other; then hollow symbols work better. Adjust the size of the point symbols so that they stand out a bit from the line without overwhelming the sense of empty space. Adjust the thickness of the plot lines to make them visible but not too strong.
• Plots, tables and figures must have descriptive captions, including a Table or Figure number. Do not put a title on top of or within a plot, use a caption. Use your word processor to generate caption text, just below the figure (and make sure to leave space between the figure caption and subsequent text). If displaying more than one plot on the same axes, you need to give a concise description identifying the various plots. Do this in the caption, or in a formatted legend.
Your caption must start with a Figure number, and must describe the figure concisely. For example, use the caption “Figure 4: Headspace pressure as a function of the internal tank temperature for three tank geometries: cubical (x), spherical (o), and cylindrical (*)” rather than “P vs. T”. The caption must give the dependent variable(s) first. You may use a legend to identify your variables, but the legend can’t replace a descriptive caption.
If you use a legend, put it inside the main plot area in a blank region. Format the legend to make it clear and informative, and so that no box appears around it. Select a font size and style large enough to read without distracting from the plot.
• Format the axis labels (and scale numbers, if necessary). You may need several iterations to find choices that clarify the meaning of your plot. Avoid long strings of zeros – e.g., if you have data in millions of pounds, choose your axis units as “millions of lbs” or “lb ? 106” rather than having numbers on your axis such as “8,000,000.”
• Save the plot in your plotting software and copy it into your MS-Word® document. Check that the copying process does not cause you to lose your formatting. Try to have your insertion point either directly after the text paragraph where you mention the plot (“…as shown in Figure 3…”) or if it will not fit on the page, insert it at the top of the next page. Make sure your caption appears directly below your plot, leaving space between the caption and the continuation of the text.
Readability studies show that using approximately one-third to one-half of a portrait-oriented (8.5 ? 11-inch) page makes a good plot size for most purposes. If you select a plot after you’ve copied it into your Word® file, you can usually change its size by dragging on the ‘handles’ on its sides and corners. If you right-click (Control-click under MacOS) on the plot within Word®, you will have some options under “Format Picture” regarding size and layout, and other options under “Edit Picture” including cropping away excess white space. Be careful that any test appearing within your plot is still at least 10-point in size once shrunk to fit your page.
• If you use a copy of a figure from another source, make sure that it meets the requirements above. Give such a figure a proper Figure number and caption of your own (remove the figure number and caption from the figure’s source), and put a citation number at the end of the caption. Figures from web pages often have colorful backgrounds that will appear dark when printed in black-and-white. It is very often necessary to re-draw figures taken from Internet sources – redraw the plot based on the original (your caption would then end with “redrawn from [#]” or “based on [#]”.
An example comparing the “MS-Excel® default” plot and a properly formatted plot of the same data appears in Appendix A of this document.
Tables:
Table formatting:
• Unless specifically instructed otherwise, include EITHER a table OR a plot of the same data in the same document – not BOTH. An exception to this occurs when you show a plot in the body of the work, but present original data in an appendix. A well-formatted plot almost always communicates better than a table.
• Choose a font size no smaller than 10 point for entries in your tables.
• Tables must appear on a single page whenever possible. Ideally, the table will appear in portrait orientation. If too many columns prevent using portrait orientation, print tables in landscape. If a table takes up more than a full page, include a caption at the top of each subsequent page, stating “Table X, continued,” and repeat the column headings at the top of each continuing page. Good examples of large multi-page tables can be found in the CRC handbook or in Perry’s
• In general, use spacing before and after table rows similar to the paragraph spacing in your main text. Do not use bordering lines between columns or rows.
An example comparing “MS-Excel® default” and a properly formatted table of the same data appears in Appendix B of this document.
You face a LOT of formatting when constructing a table or plot; plan for enough time to do it well!
Writing text discussion
For all assignments, you will record your observations, discuss the details of your approaches and/or discuss the relevance of your results in the context of the assignment. This will sometimes take a sentence or two, and will sometimes take pages – you can get a sense of the weight placed on text discussion for a particular assignment by looking at the assignment’s checklist items. Sometimes, you will integrate discussion of this type into the individual tasks, but sometimes you will more appropriately write a separate discussion section. If an assignment contains many individual questions or tasks, it probably works best that you integrate the discussion text into the assignment.
As you prepare for the second draft of the body of the work, you might want to check for thoroughness and completeness. This list of questions might help you – of course not all of them will apply to every assignment:
• Have you challenged the information and assumptions provided? (This question ensures that you have overlooked no significant details.)
• Does your work as presented ‘solve’ the real problem (answer the real questions)? (This question ensures that the solution addresses all the concerns of the real problem.)
• Have you deeply solved the problem (question), or given only a surface solution? (This question suggests that you ensure that your work gets at the important issues of the assignment/problem.)
• Does the work have impact? (This question considers whether the work has application elsewhere or applies only to this single problem/assignment.)
• Have you examined all the consequences of the solution/work? (This question ensures that your have reviewed the possible effects of the solution and have found them acceptable, especially if the work has application beyond this one assignment.)
• Does the work accomplish all it can? (This question ensures that the work goes beyond narrow limits.)
• If solving a particular problem, does the solution seem economically efficient? (This question ensures that the benefits of your proposed solution justify the proposed expenditure of resources.)
• Does the presentation of the work proceed logically? (This question ensures that the work follows a clear and complete sequence of reasoning.)
• Is the work economically, environmentally and politically responsible? (This question ensures that the work is ethical.)
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The Post-Reflection
After you have completed the work in each assignment you will reflect on the assignment, and on your efforts and approaches, considering what these mean in relation to your goals, to the goals of the course, and to the instructor’s goals in assigning the work. This is not the Discussion section of the assignment – that appeared as part of the body of the work.
The post-reflection describes how the work went or might answer someone who asks you how you did on or what you thought about the assignment (e.g., “I realize now how little I knew about global warming before I started this course,” or “I noticed that I have a tendency to rush through calculations which results in many arithmetic errors,” or “Next time I’ll ask for help immediately when I get stuck,” or “To me, this assignment didn’t seem very relevant to the learning goals”). Write to give evidence of your own reflection and understanding of your learning, work style and habits. Always write the post-reflection after completing the work. It will typically also refer back to the pre-reflection. If you imagine that the body of the work serves as a conversation you have with the person assigning the tasks, then you can think of the pre- and post-reflections as conversations you have with yourself.
Consider including these items in a post-reflection (answering “why” is the most valuable):
• Which approaches worked well; which did not, and why?
• What do you know now about your own learning and work approaches that you wish you’d known before starting, and why?
• Based on this, what would you or the team do differently next time, and why?
• Did you make good use of your strengths? Did you prevent your weaknesses from having a negative impact?
• How did your actual learning compare with the assignment’s learning objectives? How might you have better achieved the learning goals?
• How does the work relate to the concepts, skills, or facts you need to master in other classes?
• How does the work relate (if it does) to your life outside the university?
• How would you summarize, in your own words, what you learned and its importance?
• What questions or concerns do you now have as a result of doing the work?
• How might you change the assignment itself to better support the course’s learning objectives?
• How have your level of interest and level of knowledge changed since the beginning of the assignment?
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The Checklist
After you’ve completed the assignment, you need to self-assess it, using the checklist. The checklist has the following benefits for students:
• no unspecified expectations – you don’t need to ask me, “What do you want?” for an assignment,
• a chance to review your work using the same criteria that I will use to grade it, which results in
• more consistent grading, because you and I know the assessment criteria in advance.
Fill in the top of the checklist with your name and the submission date. Choose a symbol (? or ?? work fine) that you will use to mark your assessments.
For each requirement, you only need to check Yes or No to indicate whether you believe you’ve met the requirement or not.
For each rated feature, assess its quality on a scale of 0 to 5 (0 = not present, 1/2 = weak, 3 = OK/Good, 4 = Excellent, 5 = Exceptionally Outstanding). If you assessed a rated feature at 4 or 5, you must explain (in the box below the rated feature) why you believe the work should qualify as Excellent or Exceptionally Outstanding.
If you believe elements of the work qualify for Extra Credit, you need to identify them in the Extra Credit box, and explain why you believe they qualify for Extra Credit.
Note that you can’t receive both a 4 or 5 for a Rated Feature and claim Extra Credit for it – high quality Rated Features and Extra Credit items are completely different things. Review the Assessment document to remind yourself of the difference.
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Brief Review of Citation Formatting
An area that often confuses students is the proper use of the published (and unpublished!) work of others. It should be obvious that any ideas, words, pictures, figures, obtained on the internet, or any other hard-copy or electronic medium are NOT YOURS, so you must use proper citation. Proper citation of someone else’s work includes all three of these:
1. either enclosure of the directly quoted work within quotation marks or proper paraphrasing (Improper paraphrasing – changing only word or sentence order and/or a few rewordings – is not proper paraphrasing, and is considered plagiarism!); AND
2. an in-line citation number (use ACS style); AND
3. a proper endnote reference (linked to the citation number) For more detail, see the ACS Style Manual1).
ACS-style citations of journal articles use the following format:
Author’s last name comma first initial period space Title of article with no quotations period space italicized abbreviation for journal title (period only if journal title ends with abbreviation) space year bolded comma space volume number italicized comma space pages period.
The title of the article can help in locating the article but may be omitted by some journals.
If a cited work has multiple authors, separate their names with a semi-colon.
Example:
Burrows, V.; Chabal, Y.; Higashi, G.; Raghavachari, K; Christman, S. Infrared spectroscopy of Si (111) surfaces after HF treatment: Hydrogen termination and surface morphology. Appl.Phys.Lett. 1988, 53, 998-1000.
(also acceptable: Burrows, V.; Chabal, Y; Higashi, G.; Raghavachari, K; Christman, S. Appl.Phys.Lett. 1988, 53, 998-1000. )
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Appendices
You may include in an Appendix any work that is relevant but not critical to the main body of a submission. For example, a listing of computer code or tables of data from a software calculation would go into an appendix. Formatting requirements for the main body of work also apply in appendices.
Precede each Appendix with a page giving a title and a description of what the appendix contains (e.g., “Appendix A: Complete Computer Code Listing for Recycling Model, Assignment #14”). Unless specified otherwise, appendices come before the list of references and before the post-assignment reflection.
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Final Cleanup
Set the checklist as the cover sheet(s) of each submission, whether hard-copy or computer file. For hard-copy submission, do not use any kind of cover, binder, or extra pages at the front.
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Submission – Hard copy
To reiterate: Print any computer-generated portion of your submission on one side of unlined paper. Be sure to set your printer to black-and white printing. Do not print onto the clean side of used paper. You may use the Print Preview command in Word® to check the appearance of your output before printing. Make sure that the headers in the checklist print properly (I will provide PDF files of assignment checklists on request so you can see how the printed checklist ought to look). Occasionally, you may wish to insert page breaks (do NOT use lots of carriage returns) to get a layout that communicates clearly and looks good. Print professional quality work without smudges, streaks, or uneven print density. For submissions of under 10 pages, staple the output in the upper left corner. For submissions of 10 or more pages, use an appropriately sized binder clip. Hand in your hard copy submissions in class before the formal start time of the class or lab session.
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Submission – Electronic
Submit a single Word® file. Name the file by attaching your last name and first initial to the front of the assignment’s name – e.g. for a lab report on forced convection, I would name my file BurrowsV_ForcedConvection.doc.
Submit files via the Blackboard link for that assignment. Blackboard SafeAssign will perform a plagiarism check. I will review any submission with a SafeAssign score above 15%. SafeAssign will show high scores if you:
• copy, even with a few word changes, text from the Web, from hard-copy publications, or from existing submissions from this or any other semester (this counts as plagiarism, for which sanctions will be strongly pursued);
• if you directly copy the assignment description provided by the instructor (do not do this – this is not plagiarism, but it is not following the formatting instructions); or
• include document titles in your References section (NOT plagiarism, and if you follow the required ACS citation format this should not happen very often).
I normally use SafeAssign settings that allow you see the SafeAssign report for your submissions, however, you will not be able to revise and resubmit, so you may wish to use an online plagiarism checker before you submit.
Submit electronic submissions only via Blackboard; I will not accept emailed submissions. Blackboard will automatically reject late submissions – even 1 second late.
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That’s It!
You are now on your way to developing professional-level communication skills. Feel free to print this document for reference. You may find that the Help facilities of MS-Excel, MS-Word and other software will answer your other questions about how to accomplish document formatting. Searching the index portion of help files often gives better results in less time than using the table of contents or answer wizard.
Appendix A: Examples of Plot Formatting
An example of a poorly-formatted plot using Excel defaults:
An example of a well-formatted plot, following the instructions in this document
Figure A1: Yearly air emissions of toxics in Arizona. Data from EPA Toxics Release Inventory
Appendix B: Examples of Table Formatting
An example of a poorly-formatted table
Table 1: Air Emissions of Selected toxic Chemicals in Arizona
Year Benzene Acetaldehyde Trichloroethylene
1988 151 128,779
1989 1,028 110,649
1990 14,723 155,900
1991 15,280 130,400
1992 17,440 142,800
1993 354 125,960
1994 255 89,138 128,129
1995 180 72,890 137,181
1996 59,610 60,022
1997 64,251 41,691
1998 25,412 33,566
1999 2,304
An example of a well-formatted table, following the instructions in this document
Table 1: Yearly air emissions of toxics in Arizona (data from USEPA Toxics Release Inventory2)
Year Benzene Acetaldehyde Trichloroethylene
1988 151 128,779
1989 1,028 110,649
1990 14,723 155,900
1991 15,280 130,400
1992 17,440 142,800
1993 354 125,960
1994 255 89,138 128,129
1995 180 72,890 137,181
1996 59,610 60,022
1997 64,251 41,691
1998 25,412 33,566
1999 2,304
References
