HOW TO CRACK GATE AND OTHER PSU EXAMS(CHEMICAL)

Hey!

GATE has now become important as some 4/5 PSUs are recruiting through it. It should require preparation for about 3/4 months to crack this exam. I scored a rank of 36 in 2013 with 67/100 marks. In general category one has to get below AIR 60 to be really sure of selection.

        From 2013, GATE was made online. Many of the answers are now required to be filed in numerically using the keyboard (ie they are not of the multiple choice types) So, one has to be thorough with the concepts. Yes! CONCEPTS hold the key as the questions are generally easy but conceptual. Accuracy, of course has become very important.

Regarding chemical engineering courses, all of them are important and must be thoroughly prepared.  BUT, it is very important to have an idea about the pattern of questions being asked. MOST IMPORTANT part of your preparation shall be solving the previous year GATE question papers (say last 20 years) available on www.unitoperation.com. Analyze the pattern and focus on areas where questions are being asked regularly. Every year they tend to ask similar questions from same areas. For example, there shall always be some questions on ‘drying’.

The 15 marks of English and mental ability should not require any special preparation as such. In fact, this area is quite scoring.

Questions from the 15 mark section of engineering mathematics are usually very easy. But due to the length/coverage of the syllabus, people tend to go unprepared. DONT DO this mistake. I found GATE maths book by ‘MADE EASY’ very suitable in this regard.

Thankfully, many of the chemical engg. courses are now available online at www.nptel.iitm.ac.in (NPTEL). Make full use of this resource as they have covered the courses very concisely

GENERAL GUIDELINES

·       Practice practice practice!!! Giving tests in exam like situations always helps

·       Coaching: thankfully, there are not many coaching institutes offering coaching in chemical engg. Coaching is NOT required as such if you can follow a disciplined approach. I have heard of this institute called Vaani (Hyderabad) which offers test series (and coaching also). Joining a test series should be beneficial as it gives momentum to your preparation

·       Be VERY THOROUGH with the important topics I have listed below

·       Do NOT leave any topic untouched while preparation. Try to cover the entire syllabus as sometimes a very easy question might be asked from the topic you left. This is specially the case with engineering mathematics portion

·       They are going to test your basic concepts especially in the one markers. So, have a good read of the theoretical portion of the textbooks Ex. Internal energy is a  state function/path function ? (2013).

CAUTION: LIST OF IMPORTANT TOPICS IS NOT EXHAUSTIVE!!!

KINETICS AND REACTOR DESIGN

·       V. Imp: Questions worth About 10 marks

·       Book/source: H S fogler

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Pseudo steady state hypothesis

2.  Questions based on design equations on CSTR, PFR, PBR

3.  Residence time distribution, Exit age function etc

4.  Diffusion effects in catalysis, pore diffusion etc

5.  single and multiple reactions in ideal reactors, 

·       Little difficult to prepare as fogler is full of complex examples which cannot be asked in GATE. Becomes difficult to decide what to study and what not!

MASS TRANSFER OPERATIONS

·       V. Imp: Questions worth About 10 marks

·       Book/source: NPTEL, TREYBAL

·       Imp subtopics

1.  2 film and other theories of diffusion

2.  Absorption-HTU, NTU concepts

3.  Distillation

4.  Counter and co current interphase mass transfer

5.  Drying

HEAT TRANSFER OPERATIONS

·       V. Imp: Questions worth About 10 marks

·       Book/source: NPTEL, J P Holman

·       VERY  scoring subject. Make sure you attempt well

·       Need not remember all the complex correlations. Just remember sieder tate and dietus bolter

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Counter and co current heat exchangers, LMTD concept etc

2.  Basics of radiation

3.  Importance/significance of various dimensionless numbers

4.  Biot number and lumped heat capacity problems

5.  Evaporators

6.  boiling

FLUID FLOW OPERATIONS

·        Imp: Questions worth About 6-8 marks

·       Book/source: NPTEL, FOX AND MC DONALD

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Pumps, NPSH

2.  Bernoulli theorem and its applications

3.  Concept of wetted perimeter

4.  Non Newtonian fluids (basic definition only)

5.  Fluidized beds

6.  Mixing and agitation- power number.

7.  Hagen–Poiseuille equation

8.  elementary boundary layer theory,

9.  free and hindered settling; 

PROCESS CONTROL

·       V.Imp: Questions worth About 10 marks

·       Book/source: SEBORG

·       Imp subtopics

1.  PID controller

2.  Feedback and feed forward control

3.  Routh and nyquist stability criteria

4.  Control characteristic of valves

5.  Characteristic curves of first and second order processes

PROCESS/EQUIPMENT DESIGN

·       NOT VERY imp. Questions worth About 4/5 marks

·       Book/source: chapter 2 of James M Douglas

·       Its not covered well at BITS. Don’t spend much time if you can’t understand

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Depreciation

2.  Annuity, amortization

3.  Optimization (refer old questions)

PROCESS CALCULATION

·       NOT VERY imp. Questions worth About 4marks

1.  Book/source: Himmelblau (few chapters)

·       Easy to score if you know your concepts well. Don’t spend much time on questions you have not practiced well. This happened to me. I spent a lot of time in solving a recycle and purge question because all of them seem doable. Ended up wasting a lot of time

·       IMP subtopics

2.  Humidity definitions

3.  Recycle and purge calculations

4.  Crystallization

CHEMICAL ENGG. THERMODYNAMICS

·       V.Imp: Questions worth About 10 marks

·       Book/source:  book by smith, ness and abbott.

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Solution thermodynamics –fugacity, excess properties etc

2.  Application of laws of thermo to equipments/process. Eg throttling is isoenthalpic

3.  Degree of freedom analysis

4.  Application of raoult’s law, henry’s law etc

5.   partial molar properties

CHEMICAL PROCESS TECHNOLOGY

·       V.Imp: Questions worth About 7/8 marks

·       Book/source:  NPTEL is a very good source

·       Very scoring

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Petro refining and petrochemicals

2.  Remember catalysts of major processes

3.  Polymerization (step, condensation), methods of polymerization like bulk, emulsion etc

4.  Sulfuric acid

MECHANICAL OPERATIONS/SELECTED CHEMICAL ENGG. OPERATIONS

·       Imp: Questions worth About 7/8 marks

·       Book/source:  McCabe and Smith is a very good source

·       Very scoring

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Cyclones

2.  Taylor series of sieves

3.  Bond’s law

CHEM ENGG. MATHEMATICS

·       VERY Imp: Questions worth  15 marks

·       Book/source: MADE EASY’S mathematics book is a very good source

·       Very scoring

·       In case you are unable to solve a question from differential equation etc, try putting the options to get the answer :) !!!

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Cauchy’s, residual theorem

2.  Numerical methods

3.  Directional(partial) derivatives

4.  Gauss’s, Green’s theorem etc

5.  Mean, median, mode, standard deviation