Process Eng for Biomedical Technologies

Process engineering applies scientific principles to convert raw materials and energy into useful products, and it is critical to a variety of biomedical technologies including production of pharmaceuticals, dialysis, tissue engineering, etc. Core to process engineering is an understanding of how energy and mass move through systems – and how these can be controlled – to achieve a desired goal. In this subject you will learn the fundamental laws that describe how heat and mass move through systems and develop mathematical models that describe this movement. We will then look at how this movement of energy and mass is applicable to the biomedical engineering discipline. Some of the topics covered are listed below: How oxygen and nutrients travel through the human body to maintain homeostasis, How cell culture and tissue engineering systems can be designed to provide sufficient nutrients and oxygen to maintain cell viability, How dialysis can be used to remove contaminants from blood of patients suffering kidney failure, How the presence of a bacterial biofilm limits the ability to treat biomedical device-related infections, and How processes can be designed to produce products like pharmaceuticals.

• 1Evaluate mass transfer in the context of biomedical engineering
• 2Analyse the roles of transport processes in the cells, tissues and organ systems of the human body
• 3Formulate problems in biological systems, identifying fundamental transport processes and the equations that describe these systems
• 4Apply principles of transport to develop solutions to problems in process and biomedical engineering