Chemical Engineering Design Project

Worked on a team to design and present a chemical process to produce butyl acrylate, a common paint additive, from sugarcane.

When it comes to sustainability in the chemical industry, one of the easiest ways to reduce your carbon footprint is to replace your raw material feed. The goal of our design project (sponsored by BASF) was to produce butyl acrylate, a paint additive commonly made from oil, from a sustainable source: sugarcane. Our goal was to design a chemical process based on literature and plant studies, optimize the profitability and carbon footprint, and compete against other designs.

The project involved researching current production routes and their technological readiness level (are you basing the design on a lab-scale trial or has this been done at a commercial scale). After researching different routes, we decided on what we thought was the best route and designed a chemical process that would meet the global demand for butyl acrylate. We wrote a report detailing our design, measures of profitability (Investor's Rate of Return or IRR, capital and operating costs, etc.), and carbon footprint reduction. We presented the results and although we weren't selected as the winning design, we received an A on the project.