Paper ID #37196

Sensemaking of Block Flow Diagrams in Chemical Engineering

Prof. Jiamin Zhang, University of California, Riverside
Jiamin Zhang received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University, and went on to com-
plete her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara. After completing a
postdoc in physics and engineering education at Auburn University, she joined the department of chemical
and environmental engineering at the University of California Riverside as an assistant professor of teach-
ing. Her teaching interests include fluid mechanics, soft matter, and engineering design. Her research
focuses on developing assessments to measure problem-solving skills of students. She is also interested
in incorporating training of ethics into engineering education and understanding how students learn most
effectively.

John Ellington Byars, Auburn University

Prof. Eric Burkholder, Auburn University
Eric Burkholder is an Assistant Professor in the departments of physics and chemical engineering at
Auburn University. He completed a PhD in chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology
studying the physics of soft active matter. He then transitioned into STEM education research during his
time as a postdoc at Stanford Univeristy. Eric’s research focuses on the intersections of assessement,
problem-solving, and equity in the undergraduate and graduate STEM classroom.

©American Society for Engineering Education, 2023

 Sensemaking of Block Flow Diagrams in Chemical Engineering

INTRODUCTION

As engineering educators, we all want our students to make sense of the ideas they encounter in
our courses. Sensemaking has been shown to help students build new knowledge and create
connections within the knowledge they already have [1]. The process of sensemaking also helps
students achieve coherence between a concept and a scenario in the real world [2]. Additionally,
sensemaking can positively benefit students’ problem-solving, leading to more efficient,
insightful, and accurate solutions [3]. In the education literature, most prior research on
sensemaking has focused on mathematical sensemaking [3], [4] or building connections between
a concept in science and a scenario in the real world [5]. Very few studies have focused on
sensemaking in engineering.
In science and engineering, visual diagrams are often used for presenting and engaging with
complex scientific concepts. Experimental studies and case studies have reported positive effects
of various types of scientific representations [6]. Multiple representations can complement each
other because they differ either in the processes each supports or in the information each contains.
For example, Tabachneck et al. examined the representations that learners created to solve
algebra word problems and found that each representation was associated with a different
strategy. The use of multiple representations and hence multiple strategies was about twice as
effective as any strategy used alone [7]. Using one representation can also constrain the
interpretation of a second representation. For example, textual representations are generally less
specific than graphical representations. When these two representations are presented together,
interpretation of the first (ambiguous) representation may be constrained by the second (specific)
representation [8]. Thus, combinations of representations can support students’ learning.
However, students often struggle to use representations effectively [9]. For example, students
have difficulty moving across and connecting representations. Students also tend to focus on the
surface features instead of the underlying scientific principles.
In chemical engineering, students are introduced to block flow diagrams (BFDs), a new type of
pictorial representation of a chemical process, early in the curriculum. For example, in the
sophomore-level material and energy balances, often an initial exercise is to convert a word
problem into a simple block flow diagram. The block flow diagram consists of a series of blocks
representing different equipment or unit operations that are connected by input and output
streams. Important information such as operating temperatures, pressures, and flow rates are
included in the diagram. However, the diagram does not include any details of equipment within
any of the blocks [10]. In the capstone design course in senior year, students will use block flow
diagrams again to draw out the initial design of a chemical process before turning the block flow
diagram into a process flow diagram (PFD) that contains much more detailed information
(including all the major pieces of equipment and numbered streams). Thus, understanding how to
read block flow diagrams is useful for understanding the overall operation of chemical plants and
is an essential skill for chemical engineering students to develop.
However, because of the complexity of the information presented in the block flow diagram, it
can be quite challenging to fully understand a block flow diagram for students learning about this
representation for the first time [11]. Additionally, typical instruction in material and energy
balances doesn’t have a large focus on the design of the chemical process [11], [12]. Thus, even if
students know how to read a BFD, they may not be able to make sense of it to identify possible
design flaws or suggest improvements.
To address gaps in the literature on sensemaking in engineering, we chose to investigate student
sensemaking with block flow diagrams. We selected block flow diagrams because they are a
unique and important representation within engineering, which may be able to provide future
information about how students make sense of other engineering representations (e.g., phase
diagrams). Our research question is: how do chemical engineering students make sense of block
flow diagrams (BFDs)?

THEORY

General features of sensemaking include being active, self-conscious, motivated, and purposeful
in the world. There is an abundance of science education research literature that aims to define
and characterize scientific sensemaking. When taken as a whole, the literature conceptualizes
sensemaking in three different ways: 1) as a stance or frame towards science learning, 2) a
cognitive process, and 3) a discourse practice [5], [13].
From a framing perspective, sensemaking is a way in which students approach science learning,
which is characterized by trying to “figure something out” using one’s prior knowledge. From a
cognitive process perspective, sensemaking is a way in which students construct new knowledge
by building connections to and within their prior knowledge. From a discourse perspective,
sensemaking is a mode of argumentative dialogue in which students articulate and strengthen
explanations. Instead of trying to win the argument, the goal of sensemaking is to strengthen
claims and improve their explanatory power. Based on a thorough review of the literature, Odden
and Russ gave a definition of sensemaking that incorporates the three different ways of viewing
sensemaking. This is also the definition of sensemaking we will use in our work. “Sensemaking
is a dynamic process of building and revising an explanation in order to figure something out – to
ascertain the mechanism underlying a phenomenon in order to resolve a gap or inconsistency in
one’s understanding [13].”

METHODS

We adapted a chemical engineering problem-solving assessment our group developed previously

[14], [15] to probe student sensemaking. The technical context we chose is the synthesis of
tetrachloroethylene, which was widely used as a dry-cleaning fluid and degreasing solvent.
Tetrachloroethylene, CCl2 =CCl2 , can be synthesized from carbon tetrachloride, CCl4 , by the
following consecutive pyrolysis reactions at 800 ºC.
2CCl4 → CCl3 –CCl3 + Cl2
CCl3 –CCl3 ↔ CCl2 =CCl2 + Cl2
We situate the participant of the assessment as an engineer responsible for designing a process
based on the above chemical reactions and relevant physical properties (melting point, boiling
point, solubility in water, and density of the chemicals involved in the reactions). The engineer is
tasked to evaluate a block flow diagram of the process drawn by their intern. The block flow
diagram is shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: First block flow diagram in the assessment.

In the assessment, we ask the participant what the first thing they notice about the BFD is, what
additional information they would request to evaluate the process, and finally ask them to suggest
changes or improvements to the BFD. The initial BFD has some errors and inefficiencies, so we
then present the participant with a corrected BFD and ask what main differences they notice, what
additional information they would request, and if they believe the revised BFD is fully optimized.
Finally, we provide the third BFD, which is further optimized compared to the second BFD, and
ask the participant what has changed in the diagram and if they agree with the changes their
colleague made. The questions were designed to allow many possible lines of reasoning without
any obvious right or wrong answer.
After developing the assessment, we recruited 7 students (3 sophomores, 2 juniors, 1 senior, and 1
PhD candidate) to participate in our study. All of the students are in the chemical engineering
department at a large public research university in the southeastern US. The sophomores were
taking a material and energy balances class in which BFDs were taught at the time of
participating in our study. The other students had already taken the material and energy balances
class. Each participant was asked to participate in a one-hour think-aloud interview [16] with the
second author. The participants were given a link to the Qualtrics survey for the assessment and
were asked to complete the assessment and talk about their thought process during the interview.
The responses in Qualtrics, interview audio files, and interview video files were used during the
data analysis.

ANALYSIS

We transcribed the interviews using the audio files and broke the transcript into 15-second blocks.
The first two authors chose one interview transcript to code independently using an open-coding
approach [17]. Once the researchers had independent codes, they increased the reliability of the
coding by comparing and resolving differences until a consensus was reached and a single set of
consistent codes was accepted. The second author then used the same coding approach to code
the rest of the interview transcripts. After the transcripts were coded, we added color coding for
common behaviors that emerged (e.g., reading questions, requesting relevant information, actions
to make diagrams easier to interpret) and used the codes and color coding to identify four general
stages of the sensemaking process. While reading short sections of the interview transcripts, the
stages appear to be linearly connected. However, when reading the interview transcript of each
student as a whole, we realized that a cyclic structure is more suitable for describing the
sensemaking process, as we will discuss below.

RESULTS

Our analysis revealed a four-stage cyclic structure that students followed when carrying out the
sensemaking of all three diagrams. Because our research is phenomenographic, the specific
actions and behaviors we observed within each stage varied widely from student to student, but
the structure we provide aims to highlight how students made sense of the block flow diagrams
and reached their conclusions. Figure 2 provides a summary of the sensemaking cycle.

I. Forming a Surface-level Understanding of the Diagram

Most students began their analysis of each diagram by creating a basic understanding of the block
flow diagram and the process that the diagram aimed to display. This would serve as a foundation
or a framework upon which they would build by forming connections between the diagram, given
information, and outside knowledge. Some of the many actions which characterize this stage are
tracing streams, identifying chemical species that enter and exit, noting process units and
temperatures, and studying the chemical reactions. For example, some students began their
analysis by examining the given chemical reactions:
“So, it (reactions 1 and 2) says that CCl4 , which looks like the carbon tetrachloride
converts to CCl3 –CCl3 plus chlorine. And then CCl3 as a further reaction into
CCl2 =CCl2 ”
This was usually followed by a transition into tracing through the diagram and determining input
and output streams:
 IV. Suggesting Improvements and Justifying
Enter Cycle

III. Evaluating the Design

Sensemaking Cycle
II. Connecting I. Forming a Surface-level
Diagram to the Understanding of the
Reactions Diagram

Figure 2: A diagram displaying the relation between and progression through each stage.

“Right here we’ve got CCl4 and then we have Cl2 coming out and then excess CCl4 .
We have some of this (CCl3 -CCl3 ) here (products of reactor I), and then that gets this
(CCl2 =CCl2 ).”
Students also made note of the basic layout of the process units as well as the temperatures at
each as in this example:
“So, there is a sequence of separators and pyrolysis reactors . . . also as we progress
downstream, we can see the temperatures decrease. So, the first pyrolysis reactor is
operated at 800 ºC, and the second reactor is operated at 500 ºC, while the liquid gas
separator. . . initially it is 100 ºC and then it’s increasing to 150 ºC.”
These prior examples were all taken from students’ analysis of the first diagram. This stage was
present in student engagement with all three diagrams but most heavily in diagram one since
students are still forming a framework with which to interpret the diagram. In the following
diagrams in which changes were incorporated, students built upon this framework. When
presented with the second and third diagrams, students still initially engaged in a surface-level
understanding of the process:
“I’m noticing the CCl4 that they’re moving back into the feed, they’re not moving
into the second stream out of pyrolysis reactor one.”
It is important to note that this stage does not involve further analysis of the changes such as their
implications rather only the identification of the structural change of the diagram.

II. Connecting Diagram to the Reactions

This next stage of sensemaking involved unit-specific analysis. After the first stage, students
understood the flow of chemicals through the diagram and their next step was determining what
was occurring at each step of the process. This involved the creation of connections between their
stage one understanding of the diagrams and the given reaction information. How the connections
were made varies among the students. Again, here most of the time spent in stage two was during
students’ analysis of diagram one. But stage two was also present in the analysis of all three
diagrams. One of the more common ways in which students made connections to the reactions
was by realizing that both reactions occurred in both pyrolysis reactors.
“Okay, carbon tetrachloride first [tracing the stream into pyrolysis reactor one], yeah
the first reaction, and some of the second.”
This designation of which reaction occurred within each reactor was demonstrated by most
students and illustrates a higher level of sensemaking. Students exhibited the ability to take the
input and out species labels for each reactor and connect them to the given reactions to determine
the reactions which were taking place. Similarly, students also used the stated separator
temperatures in tandem with the given chemical data table to determine the states of the separated
species. Although this aspect was not the target of any follow-up question, it nevertheless
indicated the same ability and level of sensemaking as connecting reactions and thermodynamic
information to unit operations.
Additionally, students made note of the role of each species–which species were reactants,
intermediates, and products–and grouped the species together accordingly. This behavior was
observed to aid students in their determination of improvements when done correctly, but when
species were classified or grouped incorrectly the opposite effect was observed. An example of a
student correctly classifying a species can be seen in this quote:
“There is also one intermediate compound produced, which has a carbon-carbon
single bond, and three chlorine atoms covalently bonded to the carbon, and also the
byproduct produced is chlorine.”
As described earlier, detecting a change on the surface level, e.g., “this stream was moved from
here to here,” is a stage one behavior. A stage two behavior that builds upon this stage one
behavior was stating what this change does in the scope of the process and connecting that back
to the reaction information. For example, in diagram two a student stated:
“So, it’s (CCl4 recycle stream) going to the initial feed stream from where they have
separated the carbon tetrachloride and they are recycling it here as well so that there
is more CCl4 that can be used.”
The student forming an understanding that the relocation of the recycle stream sends the recycled
reactant is an example of a possible stage two behavior.
This stage of our sensemaking cycle seems to be the most beneficial when done thoroughly and
correctly but also the most detrimental when done incorrectly and incompletely. The connections
between the given diagram and the reaction information are what the students use to evaluate the
design in the next stage. Students who engaged more time in the breakdown of the process into its
individual units and how they relate to the reaction information had a greater understanding of the
interplay between process units and the role of each species and were able to suggest more
improvements and notice more errors.
III. Evaluating the Design
In stage two, students made connections between the given information (e.g., the block flow
diagram and the reactions). In the third stage, students had to make decisions based on outside
information or outside knowledge and how it related to their understanding of the process which
they developed in the prior two stages. This aspect of connecting to outside information or
knowledge demonstrates a higher level of sensemaking than in the prior two stages. Unlike stages
one and two, this stage was equally present during students’ analysis of all three diagrams but
proceeded much differently in each. The behaviors that characterize this stage are rationalizing
changes between diagrams, requesting more information, and deciding if improvements can be
made to the current diagram.
Students were prompted to request information to further analyze the given diagram. In order to
do this, the students must already have a firm understanding of the diagram at hand and the
relevant reaction information. Students who did not engage thoroughly in stage two when
prompted to request information asked for irrelevant data that would not aid them in any aspect of
evaluating the diagram. Some examples of these data are enthalpies of mixing, enthalpies of
reaction, enthalpies of formation, operating pressure, and catalysts for the reactions. While this
information is relevant to chemical engineering more broadly, it served no purpose here.
Conversely, students who spent a large portion of time within stage two were able to determine
data that would benefit them in assessing the design further. For example, in their analysis of
diagram 2, a student states:
“But I’m really worried about reactor two because this seems to be what really
determines the efficiency of our entire process. Because this is determining what
percentage is ending up leaving and waste and what percentage ends up leaving
basically as, you know, our desired product. So, I would probably request a single
pass efficiency of pyrolysis reactor II with the intermediate reactant fed outputting
our desired products.”
Here the student utilized their understanding formed in stage two that CCl2 =CCl2 is the desired
product and that CCl3 –CCl3 is the intermediate. They realized first that the intermediate can be
reacted further into the product, but also that under the current conditions the amount of
intermediate wasted is determined by the efficiency of the second reactor, and requested that
information accordingly. Their determination of reactor efficiency as relevant data is an example
of a stage three behavior.
When prompted to decide whether or not they agreed with the changes made in diagram two,
students similarly used their understanding of the changes from stage two and their outside
knowledge of the effect of the recycle stream on process efficiency to decide whether to agree or
not. Almost all students agreed, but for the ones that did not agree, it was due to a lack of
knowledge and misinterpretation of the diagram. The action of agreeing or disagreeing and the
corresponding reasoning is another example of a stage three behavior. Students used the same
process in their determination of whether or not improvement was needed. If a student decided
improvement was not needed, they proceeded to the next diagram and engaged in stage one of the
cycle again.
IV. Suggesting Improvements and Justifying
Suggesting improvements and justifying is outside the cycle and is the highest level of
sensemaking and understanding observed. To suggest an improvement requires the student to
have a thorough understanding of a given diagram and how both the given reaction information
and outside information connect to the diagrams and use this to correctly identify where the
diagram could be improved. The student has to form a new idea based on their decision that there
is room for improvement, which they made in stage three of the sensemaking cycle. This creation
of a new idea and forming the reasoning behind it is the stage four behavior. An example of a
student taking an aspect of the diagram through the entire sensemaking cycle can be seen in the
following quotes from a student’s analysis of diagram one:
Stage I
“So, we have two streams of that (CCl2 =CCl2 ) going out, and then as well as we have
one CCl3 –CCl3 and then chlorine going out as well.”
The student was tracing flows and seeing how species, in particular CCl3 –CCl3 , are moving
throughout the diagram.
Stage 2
“That (CCl4 ) is going into is some CCl2 =CCl2 and some CCl3 –CCl3 which is our
intermediate reactant.”
The student assigned hexachloroethane the role of intermediate reactant.
Stage III
“And that bottom product– that bottom flow (CCl3 –CCl3 ) is that’s all waste.”
Here the student combined their understanding of how the species flows through the diagram with
their knowledge of the role of the species in the process and determined that the process is
wasting the intermediate reactant.
Stage IV
“Then I would say just recycling the CCl3 -CCl3 to the pyrolysis reactor II and
basically, that would just, I guess increase the efficiency of the system.”
The student has completed the cycle by taking his understanding from stage three and creating
something new, an improvement to the process. The student goes on to justify his reasoning with
outside knowledge.
Following stage four, students would reenter the cycle upon moving to the following diagram.
Additionally, during stage four students would revisit the other stages to bring information to the
front of their minds. An important note is the first three stages occurred iteratively; students were
observed to repeatedly move through the cycle when assessing different aspects of the
design.
DISCUSSION

The ability to determine a viable correct answer and the exact process to get there was unique for
each student, but the overall sensemaking cycle aimed to broadly describe the general process that
was observed in each participant. We also compared the sensemaking cycle with stages of
sensemaking identified in related studies. In particular, in the sensemaking epistemic game paper,
Odden and Russ identified four stages for the sensemaking process for students working in pairs
on an electric circuit, which involves 1) assembling a knowledge framework, 2) noticing an
inconsistency or gap in knowledge, 3) generating an explanation to reconcile it, 4) and
resolution [5]. Stages one and two form an iterative process, with students identifying new
inconsistency in their new explanations. Although the context for sensemaking is different
between this paper and our study (electric circuit and block flow diagram), similar stages are
identified and both processes involve iterations.
In our study, all students except one failed to suggest an improvement when analyzing diagram
one (Fig. 1), it was only after seeing the change made in diagram two that they were able to
suggest an improvement of their own. This could point to the fact that block flow diagrams
contain a large amount of information making it hard for students to dissect them initially.
Students also did not suggest the same improvements at the same frequency. The most commonly
suggested improvement to diagram two was the addition of a CCl3 –CCl3 recycle stream similar to
the example discussed above for stage IV. Interestingly, two students suggested different
solutions, one suggesting the reactors react consecutively followed by separation and appropriate
recycling, and the other suggesting the removal of reactor two and subsequent separators and
recycling everything back into reactor one. Each of these students had unique approaches to the
task, with the former focusing on trying to reduce the total number of separators, and the latter
looking to combine separators. Both students had chemical engineering internship experience,
and these results may be a product of their time in the field.
As mentioned in Stage IV in the results section, several students justified the changes in the
diagram that they observed or justified the changes that they suggested. These justifications strike
us as particularly strong instances of engineering sensemaking because the students sought
coherence between at least three representations: one or two block flow diagrams, the chemical
reactions, and conceptual knowledge about chemical engineering processes (e.g., benefits of
using a recycle stream). In the work on student sensemaking about equipotential graphs, the
authors also observed students justifying their claims [18].
Throughout the sensemaking process of the BFDs, students created a “story” that followed the
flow of the diagram which they would use in tandem with the diagram. For example, when the
students first saw the BFD, they would trace the streams to explain to themselves the purpose of
each unit. In chemical engineering education, most problems are word problems and students are
taught to make diagrams to model the problems. For problems involving BFDs, the focus is
shifted to diagrams and students tend to use verbal descriptions (i.e., a ”story”) to help them
understand the diagram. Additionally, in stage two, students connected the BFDs to the given
information about the chemical reactions. Both of these are evidence of students creating links
between different types of scientific representations (written or verbal descriptions and diagrams).
This is consistent with the cognitive process perspective of sensemaking: when making sense of a
new science concept, students construct new knowledge by building connections to and within
their prior knowledge and these connections may be facilitated when students create links
between different types of scientific representations for that concept [5].
Although students were able to suggest some improvements to the diagrams after seeing the
changes that were made in diagrams 2 and 3 compared to diagram 1, and were able to request
some relevant information, most of them failed to identify any flaws in diagram 1 before they saw
diagram 2. Also, none of the students were able to identify all the flaws in the diagrams or suggest
all the needed improvements. We hypothesize that this is partially due to the lack of design
experience in the material and energy balances course in which students learned BFDs and
partially due to the large amount of information that’s contained in the BFD. This calls for a need
of effective instructional practices that can better support students’ sensemaking of BFDs. For
example, students should be given more opportunities to troubleshoot flawed BFDs and make
design improvements. It would also be helpful for students to work in pairs and critique each
others’ solutions.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE WORK

Although the one-on-one think aloud interviews revealed general stages of the sensemaking cycle
for BFDs, we were not able to capture the sensemaking process of students working in pairs on
the assessment. As suggested by the discourse practice perspective of sensemaking, whether it is
being done collaboratively or individually, sensemaking always involves the dialogue between
construction and critique [5]. A single person may use different mental “voices” for construction
and critique [19]. It will be useful to conduct interviews with students when they are working on
the BFDs in pairs and check if the same sensemaking stages emerge. Additional future directions
include developing instructional practices that support sensemaking of BFDs and using our
sensemaking assessment in classrooms as a pre-test and post-test to evaluate the effectiveness of
the instructional practices.

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