WEEK 2
In this week, our group focus on find the highlights of the articles, plus we did find another articles as extra informations. The confirmations from several articles, in deciding how the reactor would become. In this week, we quite busy and some misunderstandings can be overcome as usual. I think considerations between the member of the group are the most important.
On the second week, we had a peer teaching session. In this session, we should gather all the information that we had found so far with the whole class. During this session, my view about this project was getting wider now I got to know things that were needed in designing the membrane reactor even though I did not fully understand it but yeayh, small improvement is better than nothing. Then on this week my group started to find other articles about the membrane reactor, the catalyst, the operating temperature for the catalyst and etc. In this stage, I hope that my group could do our best in this project.
For this week, we distributed task by assigning one member to read one article to save time. In class, we did peer teaching where 5 groups combined to make a big mind map on what they had found or came up with in a week. Then, one representatives from two groups presented their mind map. From the mind map, we knew what we need to consider and search for. I think it will ease us but it became more worse as we need to consider everything from beginning. I did not know where to start and hence we decided to collaborate with other group as the more the merrier. We did few meetings together and we did solve some parts. I could say that different people have different understanding and thus from this big group, it helped me to understand more about the problem.
And now, we are given the task to design a membrane reactor. What an excitement! Have been waiting for this since the semester’s beginning. Briefing by Dr Raihan and Dr Tazli was short but very useful for us to understand the case. Basically, we have to design a reactor that can produce 30000 ton/ year of hydrogen gas through steam reforming of methane. The first day we were instructed to do mind map on the task. One Mahjong paper for Problem statement (where we define the problem) and another for the table where we list out what we know, have to know and the learning issues. This was a great idea since we get the bigger picture in a short period of time. We were given the important reading materials to refer in order to complete the task. It would have been great if the answer was given, but what would be the time since this is an open ended assignment. So, yeah. Problem Based Learning starts!
​
​
​
​
Articles read. Mind-maps done. What else? Here we are still blank with what we have in hands. After all, it’s true that we were spoon-fed since young. But, fortunately, we were raised to be independent. So many knowledge in short period of time and the brain might be overloaded, but we have to go on. My team have finally decided the methods we are going to follow. We have selected fixed bed membrane reactor as our reactor with palladium alloy as membrane and pure nickel as catalyst. What we do might be wrong but it is all in the learning process so we believe we will get it right in the end. Dr Raihan discussed with us and advised us on where we could improve. All points taken and we were all full of anxiety since we will have to present the following week.