After Exam Discussions

[Road Guy]

Please be mindful of what you post, would hate to see anyone get in trouble!

 

[rppearso]

The morning section was pretty easy, was able to pretty much confidently answer every question with 7-10 min to spare. The after noon not so straight forward, maybe 10-15 confidently answered, 10 was so so on and 4-5 I had to blindly guess on (mostly thoes tricky reaction questions), I did not have any equations in my quick reference to answer thoes 4-5, was able to answer one about a PFR volume but it required an integrel and the "most nearly answer" was more off than I needed for comfort. Some of thoes after noon questions were pretty strange, not really anything you can study for. I was excited that I was able to effectivly use the index in my perrys to nail quite a few questions that I otherwise would have had no idea. I hope I got enough to pass becasue that was not a fun experience, although I was less confident about the EIT and I passed that so I think I will be ok but I wont know until January. Do they typically take the full 12 weeks for the PE as I think I got the EIT back in like 8-10 weeks? It kind of sucks that they drag out the grading time so long as I was planning on taking an advanced engineering math course this spring but not if I have to retake the PE and late January is to late to withdraw from the course, so if the results are not in a few days after new years I may have to not take the class or see if I can work out a special deal with the univiersity.

BTW does anyone know if there is a crane equivilant for reaction engineering or know of a good reaction engineering book (like a really good one), the PE exam showed how much I was really lacking on reaction kinetics and it would not be a bad idea to beef up on it more even if I do pass, the sad thing is reaction kinetics was my best topic in school and my worse topics are the ones I use every day now at work so my strenghts literally flipped, how wierd is that.

 

[cdtriece]

I felt the same way. The morning was pretty straightforward but the afternoon section, although less math, was alot tougher. I was not expecting such a heavy dose of reactor design/kinetics and mass transfer/distillation. I thought just a few problems from each of those topics would show up but I was wrong. Also, there were hardly any fluids/heat transfer problems in the PM portion, although there were quite a few in the AM section.

As far as kinetics, I would check out "Chemical Reaction Engineering" by Levenspiel. I took it to the test and used it quite a bit. There is a great chart in one of the first few chapters with all the design eqns you need for batch/PFR/CSTR reactors for Zero/1st/2nd order reactions (reversible and non-reversible, constant density and varying volume).

I'm hoping I got 30/40 in the AM and 25/40 in PM but that could be a stretch. Guess we'll see in a couple months.

 

[rppearso]

I felt the same way. The morning was pretty straightforward but the afternoon section, although less math, was alot tougher. I was not expecting such a heavy dose of reactor design/kinetics and mass transfer/distillation. I thought just a few problems from each of those topics would show up but I was wrong. Also, there were hardly any fluids/heat transfer problems in the PM portion, although there were quite a few in the AM section.
As far as kinetics, I would check out "Chemical Reaction Engineering" by Levenspiel. I took it to the test and used it quite a bit. There is a great chart in one of the first few chapters with all the design eqns you need for batch/PFR/CSTR reactors for Zero/1st/2nd order reactions (reversible and non-reversible, constant density and varying volume).

I'm hoping I got 30/40 in the AM and 25/40 in PM but that could be a stretch. Guess we'll see in a couple months.

Yea I had even beefed up my reactor section in my quick reference and there were some questions I could not answer in the PM section. The mass transfer questions were not to bad. I think I am going to order that book but it sounds more like a text book which is fine but do you know of a chemical kinetics reference that is like crane like a condensed 40 page spiral bound reference? The crane manual saved my butt on the morning section as far as time and it would have been nice to have a reference like that for kinetics where they have all the equations layed out left right and sideways so I am not reinventing the wheel during the exam, one of the kinetics questions I got I had to integrate and that was a pain.

 

[cdtriece]

Yea I had even beefed up my reactor section in my quick reference and there were some questions I could not answer in the PM section. The mass transfer questions were not to bad. I think I am going to order that book but it sounds more like a text book which is fine but do you know of a chemical kinetics reference that is like crane like a condensed 40 page spiral bound reference? The crane manual saved my butt on the morning section as far as time and it would have been nice to have a reference like that for kinetics where they have all the equations layed out left right and sideways so I am not reinventing the wheel during the exam, one of the kinetics questions I got I had to integrate and that was a pain.

I don't know of one, sorry. I did not get the quick reference, only the Reference Manual by Lindburg, which had a pretty pathetic kinetics section. Basically, I read through the first 5 or 6 chapters of Levenspiel (it is a textbook but is a pretty easy read) and made my own "quick reference" sheet with design equations for each type of reactor (batch/PFR/CSTR). This came in handy during the exam, although I did have to consult Levenspiel for a couple problems that weren't as straightforward.

 

[rppearso]

I don't know of one, sorry. I did not get the quick reference, only the Reference Manual by Lindburg, which had a pretty pathetic kinetics section. Basically, I read through the first 5 or 6 chapters of Levenspiel (it is a textbook but is a pretty easy read) and made my own "quick reference" sheet with design equations for each type of reactor (batch/PFR/CSTR). This came in handy during the exam, although I did have to consult Levenspiel for a couple problems that weren't as straightforward.

I also did the same thing in my quick reference but when in the exam I found that the equations that I had in the quick reference did not help me all that much other than the PFR question that asked to solve for volume. Eh I am going to order that book and hopefully I passed the exam so I dont have to mess with it again. We will know in a few months.