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Research on student-learning outcomes indicates that university graduates do not possess relevant skills required by the industry such as leadership, emotional intelligence, problem solving, communication, decision-making skills and the ability to function in a multicultural environment. Currently, engineering graduates are expected to perform within a diverse working environment, hence the need to possess appropriate professional competencies and attributes. This paper seeks to identify strengths and potential shortfalls of work integrated learning (WIL) for students placed in the engineering sector. It presents findings from a study of workplace supervisors of chemical engineering students at one university of technology on the coastal seaboard. Supervisors from a variety of chemical industries completed a WIL students' competency assessment, which measures 23 work-related competencies using a 4-point Likert scale. The competencies were organised under two broad themes of cognitive and behavioural skills. The two themes were further broken down into five sub-themes, namely ability, performance, judgement, attitude and suitability. This defines the common characteristics of superior performers within the workplace. The results show that most students meet the standard expectation on the cognitive or 'hard' skills but seem to lack the behavioural or 'soft' skills. There were statistically significant differences between cognitive and behavioural skills. The findings from this study suggest that cooperative education programmes need to do more in developing the students' soft skills before they go out for WIL placement to ensure effectiveness and broad-based technical competence.

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Among traditional hazardous waste sources, pharmaceutical-containing wastewater and acidic mine drainage need treatment to preserve the expected water supply quality. A nano zero-valent iron (nZVI)-enriched treatment of these two streams is evaluated for simultaneous removal of various heavy metal ions, organic pollutants, sulfates, the efficiency of the treatment system, and separation of reaction products in the fluidized-bed reactor. The reactor packed with silica sand was inoculated with sludge from an anaerobic digester, then 1–3 g/L of nZVI slurry added to cotreat a hospital feed and acid mine wastewater at 5:2 v/v. The biotreatment process is monitored through an oxidation–reduction potential (Eh) for 90 days. The removal pathway for the nZVI used co-precipitation, sorption, and reduction. The removal load for Zn and Mn was approximately 198 mg Zn/g Fe and 207 mg Mn/g Fe, correspondingly; achieving sulfate (removal efficiency of 94% and organic matter i.e., chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), total dissolved nitrogen (TDN) reduced significantly, but ibuprofen and naproxen achieved 31% and 27% removal, respectively. This enriched cotreatment system exhibited a high reducing condition in the reactor, as confirmed by Eh; hence, the nZVI was dosed only a few times in biotreatment duration, demonstrating a cost-effective system.

This study seeks to investigate how chemical engineering students from South African low-income communities locate knowledge structures. The study used an existing Engineering Related Beliefs Questionnaire (ERBQ) to evaluate beliefs of 268 chemical engineering students. The questionnaire collects additional information by allowing open-ended responses on each item to increase reliability of the questionnaire. Findings suggest that more than 60 per cent of students believe that engineering knowledge cannot be argued, and that learning takes place only when the lecturer transmits knowledge. Engineering educators may consider a humanizing pedagogy, which create opportunities for students from low-income communities to be liberated and reduce the dependency culture. Application of this pedagogy may assist students to achieve life long learning whilst developing necessary soft skills like independent thinking and innovation.

Highlights Bioremediation process for acidic mine water co-treatment with hospital wastewater. Metal precipitation reached 98% and soluble concentrations of Fe and Zn were less than 0.1 mg/l. SO 4 2− removal was above 90% in the sulfidogenic bioreactor. Naproxen, ibuprofen, ketoprofen, and diclofenac partially removed during the co-treatment process.