Our student this week is Jordan Parkhurst, a Chemical engineering major who accepted a co-op at MARS Petcare located in Nashville, Tennessee. Parkhurst describes the department he worked in and what his main responsibilities were.
“I worked as a Global Applied Science Technology (GAST) intern, at the STARS facility for Mars Petcare,” he said. “My responsibilities included preparation each day for the project at hand, executing mass balance calculations, automating and implementing automation for our large design experiment, extrusion work including extrusion theory and extrusion rheology, extrusion kibble trials, as well as helping at a larger Mars plant with one of the current R&D trials.”
A challenge that Jordan had on this assignment was running a design experiment with multiple parameters.
“Something I brought to my supervisor’s attention is the problem of time point readings in our extreme cooking times (fifteen to sixty minutes),” said Parkhurst. “Conventionally we would take a temperature and pressure reading every five minutes. With a fifteen-minute run, we would only have three-time points, and this is not acceptable. I suggested computer software and electrical PTs and TTs attached to controllers to automate the system. I found the correct controllers, learned how to wire in 4-20mA sensors to the controllers, and how to wire the LIN-bus system to integrate through a RS-485 USB and into the SLSOFT software, thus giving us a time point reading every thirty seconds. I learned suggestions, even though they may seem outlandish to the norm, may be great ideas!”
Parkhurst said the most valuable benefit that he received during his co-op assignment was, “I think the experience, as well as getting to know the people of Mars, and learning their work culture was the largest benefit. You can only learn so much from school, but the bulk of what it takes to be something like an engineer is learning from experience. I work alongside many folks with a lot of experience that they’re happy to share with me, and that’s a priceless benefit!”