Chemical Engineering Laboratory Projects in Student Teams in Real Life and Transformed Online: Viscose Fiber Spinning and Characterization

Chemical engineering education comprises a complexity of technical skills that include learning processes that are currently relevant in industry. Despite being a rather old industrial process, the manufacturing of viscose fibers still accounts for the major fraction of all human-made cellulosic fibers worldwide. Here we describe a laboratory setup to introduce chemistry and engineering students into the principles of cellulose fiber spinning according to the viscose process. The setup for fiber spinning is kept simplistic and allows the experiments to be performed without professional spinning equipment. However, all of the steps are performed analogously to the industrial process. The professional setting in process and chemical engineering involves work on projects and in teams. Hence, we have incorporated the fiber spinning laboratory experiment in the context of working in teams on projects. We will also present our experience on transferring a real-life laboratory experiment online, as this is required at times that online education is preferred over real-life teaching.