A remote foaming experiment

Abstract

The 2019 pandemic locked lab doors to students and guest colleagues, with an impoverishment for all. Inspired by the 2015 work on "cloud chemistry" at the University of Nottingham, we designed an experimental facility to go beyond doors and boundaries (Skilton et al., 2015). On December 16th, 2020, an entire class of grad students virtually entered the foamlab of the University of Naples Federico II and remotely performed a plastic foaming experiment. The autoclave design, the plastic granules-handling robot, the process control and the vision acquisition system were all engineered to allow easy control by inexperienced operators and to guarantee safety to the local instructor. The digitalization of the foaming process is an exhaustive and modern pedagogical activity whereby chemical engineering and materials science and engineering students test their knowledge of transport phenomena, thermodynamics and process control. Students' response was enthusiastic: each of them felt at the centre of the active learning process.