Chemical product and process design teaching is facing challenges due to the major changes occurred in the last decades in the chemical industry. The emergence of products as a focus for chemical engineers implies changes in what chemical engineers do. It is important to prepare students for the more diverse, flexible roles they are expected to perform in industry and nowadays it is requisite that chemical engineers participate in the whole process from conception to manufacture. This paper addresses the activity of ideas generation, a very important step in product and process design procedure, and explores the role of concept maps and mind maps along with the discussion of the main features of the methods used to map and structure the ideas. The main goal of this paper is to present the methods within the context of product and process design teaching and learning showing the potentialities of the methods as graphical representations, in the ideas generation step in order to allow free-flowing thoughts. An illustration of the maps performed by chemical and biological engineering master students within the product and process design curricular unit is presented along with the main conclusions. This type of maps is promising in order to allow chemical and biological engineering students gradually lift their skills.

Abstract-Projects thematically focused on simulation and statistical techniques for designing and optimizing chemical processes can be helpful in chemical engineering education in order to meet the needs of engineers. We argue for the relevance of the projects to improve a student centred approach and boost higher order thinking skills. This paper addresses the use of Aspen HYSYS by Portuguese chemical engineering master students to model distillation systems together with statistical experimental design techniques in order to optimize the systems highlighting the value of applying problem specific knowledge, simulation tools and sound statistical techniques. The paper summarizes the work developed by the students in order to model steady-state processes, dynamic processes and optimize the distillation systems emphasizing the benefits of the simulation tools and statistical techniques in helping the students learn how to learn. Students strengthened their domain specific knowledge and became motivated to rethink and improve chemical processes in their future chemical engineering profession. We discuss the main advantages of the methodology from the students' and teachers perspective.

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