The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic required educational institutions to adapt face-to-face to remote teaching. This study reports the experience in the first semester of 2020 for a Chemical Engineering Capstone Design Course at the University of Campinas in Brazil. In this course, senior year students develop a group project, in which they simulate a chemical plant and evaluate its technoeconomic feasibility. In 2020, the groups were proposed to design a process to replace diesel fuel from the bus fleet in Campinas city with renewable fuel DME. Because of the pandemic, several adaptations were needed: the theoretical classes became asynchronous, group meetings were online, a commercial simulator was replaced by an open access one, and the schedule was extended by 2 weeks. Despite that, the students had a great performance, comparable to face-to-face. To assess student satisfaction, a questionnaire was used. The course met the expectations of most of the students who also recommended keeping it in the remote format or merging it with face-to-face teaching. Therefore, these changes made it possible to apply new teaching dynamics and tools that could be used in the future to improve the course quality.

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Copaiba oleoresin has sesquiterpenes and diterpenes with significant medicinal properties, including being antimicrobial, antiparasitic, and wound healing, among others. Thus, the objective of this work was to study the diterpene enrichment of the copaiba oleoresin from Copaifera officinalis via molecular distillation. Evaporator temperature (EVT) and feed flow rate (Q) were evaluated using an experimental design (2 2 with central point) considering the ratio of distillate and residue streams (DTR) as the response to optimize the residue recovery. EVT and Q were the main effects for diterpenes recovery, with the best experimental condition at 100 C (EVT) and 15 ml/min (Q) under 0.001 mbar, of which the residue stream had a diterpenes content of 99.25%. With the molecular distillation process, it was possible to add value to the copaiba streams, separating and purifying diterpenes with applicability in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries since no solvent is used in this process (clean).

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