Bachelor's degree programme Chemical Engineering

My name is Bart Hilshoff and I'm studying chemical engineering at Delft. It can be compared to a more mathematical chemistry. An experiment I did with a friend was we made a plastic bar and we put it in a machine to measure the elastic modulus and the machine increased the temperature. So the elastic modulus was put against the temperature. So we know how the elasticity of the bar is influenced by temperature. You learn a certain way of thinking. Your way of thinking about a problem becomes more analytical. This helps you to attack a problem more efficiently. Working together is very useful in my opinion because you can know everything by yourself. The discussions you have with students and their different opinions will help you get to the problem yourself but also allow you to get a new way of thinking. While your bachelor research project is mostly done in a lab we also have some projects which are out of the lab with computer work and simulations. For example, I finished a project working for Afibé, a company in the Netherlands. We got a case study from Afibé. We had to improve their protein line because Afibé works with potatoes and mainly the potato starch. But if potato starch is taken out of the potato you're left with a potato juice which is protein rich. We had to separate these proteins from the potato juice which we did with a simulation and a process design. The simulation is a computer program and it's very easy to give insights about mass flows and temperatures when using this kind of simulation. If you're interested in studying chemical engineering please visit one of the open days or the website.