BEE 3500

Heat and Mass Transfer in Biological Engineering

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

Focuses on understanding the principles of heat and mass transfer in the context of biological (biomedical/bioprocessing/bioenvironmental) systems. Emphasizes physical understanding of transport processes with application examples from plant, animal and human biology, the bioenvironment (soil/water/air), and industrial processing of food and biomaterials.

Prerequisites Prerequisite or corequisite: MATH 2930 and BEE 3310 or equivalent.

Last 4 Terms Offered 2025FA, 2024FA, 2023FA, 2022FA

Learning Outcomes

• Develop problem formulation and solution ability following a step-by-step approach, applying to heat and mass transfer in biological systems
• Describe the various modes of heat and mass transfer: conduction, convection, radiation, mass diffusion, dispersion and mass convection
• Apply mass and energy conservation to develop governing equations for heat and mass transfer
• Formulate appropriate types and number of boundary conditions to solve the governing equations for a particular situation
• Identify the ranges of biomaterial properties affecting the heat and mass transfer processes
• Build conceptual knowledge of temperatures/concentrations and heat/mass fluxes in biological systems and calculate the same: I. Under steady and unsteady conduction and diffusion II. In conduction and diffusion in presence of flow III. In radiative and combined radiative-convective situations IV. In systems undergoing phase change (freezing and thawing).

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