Chemical Engineering

Questions: 1. List the parameters (both agricultural and processing) in what you believe is their likely order of importance (largest to-smallest likely effect on the quality of the oil.2. Given that you would like at least 2 replicates of each measurement, what is the maximum number of parameters you could screen at two levels (and stay within budget)?3. The lab returned your results; you fit the data to a statistical model and found beta values for each parameter. Will you choose the highest beta values or the lowest beta values to identify the most important parameters from the screening?4. From the screening run, you chose the 4 parameters that seem to be most important. Your boss will now make available the funds for analysis of 75 additional samples (beyond the first 250). What will you do with the funds? Answer: Introduction The quality of oil derived from flax seed depends on various conditions. Agricultural conditions and the conditions of processing influence the quality of oil. Agricultural conditions like rainfall, amount of sunlight, quality of the land and its slope, the amount of ripeness of the seed and the time between the harvesting and processing influences the quality of the seed (Mercier et al. 2014). Processing conditions like the temperature at which the seeds are processed, the pressure exerted by the rollers, rate of processing and the condition of perseverance of the processed output influences the quality of the oil that was derived from the flax seed. 1. List of parameters according to their importance The parameters of the agricultural conditions that affect the quality of the oil from the flax seed is given below. The parameters are arranged in the order of most important to least important. The parameters are seed variety, ripeness of the seed, days of sunlight, rainfall, slope of the field, delay between harvest and processing, distance between rows (Kasote et al. 2013). The parameters of processing conditions, which affect the quality of the oil from the flax seed, are listed in terms of importance; i.e. the parameters are given below from the most important to least important. They are processing temperature, processing rate and roller speed. 2. Maximum number of parameters that can be chosen It is given that there are funds for 250 samples. The total number of parameters available for both agricultural conditions and processing conditions is ten. Therefore, in total, there are funds for 2500 types of experiments. Now, at least two replicates must be considered for each measurement. The funds for this consideration remain same as the pervious case. The number of parameters that is to be considered for this case would decrease (Mercier et al. 2014). On considering at least, two replicates for each sample, the minimum number of sample size turns out to be 500. Funds for 250 samples would now fund the experiment for 500 samples. Therefore, the number of parameters to be considered reduces to half. Hence, the maximum number of parameters that could be screened is five. The five important parameters that must be screened in order to get a proper effect of agricultural and processing conditions are seed variety, ripeness of the seed, processing temperature, processing rate and days of sunlight (Kasote et al. 2013). 3. Identifying the most important parameters from screening On getting the result from the lab and fitting the data in statistical models, the beta value of all the parameters were found out. Beta value is defined as the probability of accepting the null hypothesis when the alternative hypothesis is true. This means a wrong hypothesis is accepted and is considered true. Higher the beta value, the more is the probability of accepting the null hypothesis when it is false. Therefore, it is better to accept the parameters, which have low beta value. This would lead to acceptance of fewer false hypotheses and would help to give result that is more accurate in the future analysis for the data from the results (Kasote et al. 2013). It must also be considered that the variables with lowest beta values must be at the top of the priority list of the parameters. If a parameter has least beta value but it lies at the bottom of the priority list, then it is better not to consider that parameter as an important parameter. In that case, a parameter of great er priority must be considered, though it might not be the one with least beta value. Hence, it would be appropriate to choose the parameters that have least beta values and have more priority than other parameters. 4. Utilisation of the funds On providing funds for addition 75 samples beyond the 250 samples and choosing the four most important parameters from the list of ten parameters, these 75 samples must be tested and analysed on the four parameters. The result of the test of these 75 samples based on the four chosen parameters must be found and compared to the results of the earlier 250 samples based on the four parameters. If the result is found to be similar, then it must be suggested that those four parameters affect the quality of oil from the flax seed (Mercier et al. 2014). It would be suggested that steps must be taken to ensure that those four parameters must be at their optimal level in order to produce good quality of oil from the flax seed. If the results of the test are not found similar to results of the 250 samples under the same four parameters, the lab testing result could be marked as wrong. The lab testing must be done all over again on the 250 samples and the list of importance of the parameters mu st be amended according to the result. The remaining 75 samples must also be tested along with these 250 samples. The result of the 325 samples must be analysed and the list of most important parameters would be concluded from this experiment. The result of the experiment on 325 samples must match the result of the experiment on 250 samples. The conclusion could be drawn from this result and the four most important parameters could be summarised from the test. Improvement in those four parameters must be done accordingly so that the quality of the oil from the flax seed could be improved further (Mercier et al. 2014). Thus, the additional fund obtained for the 75 new samples could be used to experiment more on the earlier and new samples and identify the important parameters that affects the quality of the oil produced from flax seed. Conclusion The above questions helped to identify the agricultural conditions and processing conditions that help to produce better quality of oil from flax seed. The parameters are ranked according to their importance. 250 samples were initially considered in the experiment. Lab test were done and few factors were selected based on their importance and least beta values. An additional 75 samples were then provided along with additional funds. They were also tested and the validity of the selected four parameters was verified on testing the new 75 samples. Thus, the important parameters affecting the production of oil from flax seed were identified. References Kasote, D.M., Badhe, Y.S. and Hegde, M.V., 2013. Effect of mechanical press oil extraction processing on quality of linseed oil.Industrial Crops and Products,42, pp.10-13. Mercier, S., Villeneuve, S., Moresoli, C., Mondor, M., Marcos, B. and Power, K.A., 2014. Flaxseed Enriched Cereal Based Products: A Review of the Impact of Processing Conditions.Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety,13(4), pp.400-412.