Preparation for Interview for Research Admissions

Dear prospective student, On behalf of the Department of Chemical Engineering, IISc Bangalore, I congratulate you on being shortlisted for interview for Research Admissions. This letter will provide you with details of the interview process so that you come adequately prepared for the same. The Department in engaged in research in frontiers areas of Chemical Engineering, with an emphasis on the fundamental aspects. The interview for admission to research programs focuses on two aspects: understanding of the basic concepts, specically in the elds of thermodynamics, reaction engineering, transport phenomena, and engineering mathematics, and your motivation and aptitude for research. We ask questions that require application of concepts you have learnt to new, varied, and unfamiliar situations. Such situations are encountered at every stage in research, and this is what makes research an exciting endeavour. The interview is held in two stages. The rst stage interview acts as a screening interview. It tests your basic preparation in mathematics and the subject of your specialization. The second stage interview is designed to test your analytical and technical skills and aptitude/motivation for research. We often ask candidates to highlight their prior research experience in the second interview. If you are a Masters student, please come prepared to make a brief oral presentation (with the use of blackboard at the most) of about 5 minutes on your project/thesis work. We expect you to highlight in this presentation the motivation and goals for the project, application of fundamental concepts of chemical engineering in your work, and your attempts to obtain a deeper understanding of the basic concepts relevant to the work. In order to provide you with some idea of the questions asked in both the stages of the interview, we have attached to this letter a list of topics covering basic concepts of chemical engineering and a list of representative questions. The questions will not be limited to the topics or subjects covered in the following list.

We look forward to seeing you at the interviews, and wish you all the best.

Department of Chemical Engineering, IISc, Bangalore.

Topics for Interview

The topics covered include, but are not restricted to, the following. 1. Thermodynamics: The rst and second laws. Heat engines and refrigeration cycles. Concept of entropy. Solution thermodynamics. Phase equilibria. Chemical equilibria. 2. Reaction engineering: Rates of reactions and rate constant, order of reaction, series and parallel reactions, homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions, pore diffusion effects, mass and energy balance equations, batch, plug ow and CSTR reactor design, multiple reactor systems. 3. Transport phenomena: Fundamental relations for the ux of mass (Ficks law), heat (Fouriers law) and momentum (Newtons law of viscosity). Convective transport. Shell balances for mass, heat and momentum, and solution of the resulting equations subject to boundary conditions. Bernoullis equation for ideal (potential) ow. Friction factor and drag coefcient in the ow through conduits, and in the ow past objects. Transfer coefcients, cooling and dissolution of spheres, simple heat exchangers, gas absorption, humidication, and drying. 4. Engineering mathematics: Graphical analysis of functions. Matrices, adjoint and inverse of a matrix, eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Ordinary differential equations, solutions of linear homogeneous and inhomogeneous ordinary differential equations subject to boundary conditions. Fundamentals of numerical analysis, including root nding, matrix inversion, and solution of differential equations.

Sample questions
Mathematics
1. Write Taylor series expansion of a function around xo . (Please use a function you like.) 2. Find eigenvalues of a 2x2 matrix. (Please use a matrix of your liking.) 3. Solve dy + 5x2 y = 3x dx
sin x x2

4. Obtain limit of

as x 0.

5. What is the integral of (x) for x ranging from to . 6. What is the probability of getting more than 10 when one throws a pair of dice together. What will it be if the dice are thrown one after the other.

7. Solve a 3x3 matrix by Gauss-elimination method. 8. Laplace transforms of y = 1 and y = t. 9. Obtain the area of a circle of unit radius using x-y coordinate system. 10. Can you solve x = 2 sin(x) graphically? 11. Can you solve x = 2 sin(x) iteratively? 12. What do you understand by divergence of a vector. Obtain it for a 2-d vector. (Please provide a vector eld) 13. Express y = x (or any other simple function) from to + in Fourier series. 14. Solve the following differential equation by Laplace transform for y (0) = 1 and y (0) = 1. y y = t 15. Solve the unsteady state heat equation.

Chemical Engineering
1. Please apply Le Chateliers principle to reversible reaction A + B C in gas phase. 2. What is the pH of a 0.02 N HCl solution? 3. Why are wet and dry bulb temperatures different? When can these be equal? 4. Sketch Carnot cycle in the p-v plane for an ideal gas. 5. What is the efciency of a Carnot engine, and why is it not unity? 6. Dene activity coefcient. 7. Apply Bernoullis equation to venturi meter 8. Indicate the forces acting on spherical particle falling in liquid. Use Stokes law to derive an expression for the terminal velocity. 9. What is the basis for logarithmic mean temperature difference. 10. What are Newtonian, Bingham plastic, and visco-elastic uids? 11. A pressure cooker is effective in cooking. Why? 12. Denitions of Re, P e, Sc, Sh, Nu numbers.

13. Design equation for a plug ow reactor. 14. Why does water freeze on a cold night even when the ambient temperature is not sub-zero? 15. Design equation for a CSTR. 16. The inner wall of a furnace is at a temperature of 200 o C and the outermost at 30 o C. The inner wall is 10 cm thick and the outer wall 20 cm with thermal conductivities of 0.05 and 0.1 W/m/oC. Draw the steady state temperature prole. What if the bulk temperature is maintained at 30 o C and the outer wall temperature is not known. (Heat transfer coefcient from outer wall to air is 20 W/m2 /o C) 17. Unsteady state mass balance for a CSTR.

18. For a series reaction A k1 B k2 C , for k1 k2 , what simplication is possible, A B or A B with what rate constants. 19. What is Ficks rst law? 20. What is Fouriers law? 21. Big animals feel more uncomfortable in summer whereas small animals feel more uncomfortable in winter. Why? 22. How would you make efciency of stage-wise operations closer to unity? 23. What is the velocity prole for ow of a Bingham plastic uid in a cylindrical tube. 24. When a mercury thermometer if dipped into hot water, the mercury level drops initially before rising. Why? 25. Consider a sphere and a cube of same volume and having the same initial temperature. If both are exposed to the same external temperature, which one will lose heat faster?