There was a new contest at AICHE in 2019 entitled, Chem-E Sports Competition (where the “sport” was the safe an optimum operation of a simulated distillation column). The event was open to academia and industry team. The simulated distillation column was provided by Simulation Solutions Inc., software (see screenshots of the software at this link) that has been used in the CHME curriculum for the past few years. The hosts set up two simulations to be run simultaneously on laptop computers. The competitors were given real-life scenarios that could be observed in a plant and an objective to complete within a given timeframe.
The NMSU team (Sarah Fox, Esai Lopez, and Jackson Nickolenko, mentored by Dr. Dan Gulino) took third place in the event.