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Chemical Pricing Information for Student Design Projects and Cost Engineering: Challenges and Opportunities

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Conference

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Salt Lake City, Utah

Publication Date

June 23, 2018

Start Date

June 23, 2018

End Date

July 27, 2018

Conference Session

Engineering Libraries Division Technical Session 3

Tagged Division

Engineering Libraries

Page Count

19

DOI

10.18260/1-2--30189

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/30189

Download Count

6671

Paper Authors

biography

David E. Hubbard Texas A&M University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-1532-9410

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David E. Hubbard is an Associate Professor and Science & Engineering Librarian at Texas A&M University Libraries. He received his master’s in library science from the University of Missouri-Columbia (2003) and bachelor's in chemistry from the University of Missouri-St. Louis (1988). More recently, he completed a master’s in geographic information science from Northwest Missouri State University (2012). Prior to joining Texas A&M University, he served as the subject liaison to several science and engineering departments at both Texas Tech University and Missouri University of Science & Technology.

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Abstract

Chemical prices are an important component of cost engineering for chemical engineering students and researchers, as well as other disciplines that might be interested in chemical processes (e.g., agricultural engineering, business, economics, and industrial engineering). Students in chemical engineering senior design (or capstone) courses are especially in need of chemical pricing to demonstrate the economic feasibility of their process designs. Over the last 12 years, bulk chemical prices have become increasingly difficult to locate as information providers publishing such information have consolidated and gradually removed that content from their publications. This paper first summarizes the history of published chemical prices in the literature and then reports on a quantitative content analysis of library research guides containing chemical pricing sources at institutions with ABET-accredited chemical engineering programs. Despite the aforementioned challenges, there are some opportunities for engineering librarians. One such opportunity involves locating citations for chemical prices from a variety of sources and placing them into a searchable database that could be a community-based solution.

Hubbard, D. E. (2018, June), Chemical Pricing Information for Student Design Projects and Cost Engineering: Challenges and Opportunities Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--30189

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