There are 6 members.

One lady and others are gentleman's .

Chairman - Tell me something about yourself digvijay.

What's your favorite subjects.. Write it down on board.

My order of preference was

cre, FM, HT, mto

1)Draw cstr.. Conversion is 80%. Now draw one recycle stream is coming back. Now tell me
conversion will change or not?

Draw 2 cstr of eqal volume in parallel now tell me conversion will increase or Dec and now in
series.. Why in series there is high conversion?

2)draw arrhenius plot. Now draw one more line below it and tell me which catalyst is better?

3)draw pfr. Now there is one reaction A=B in gas phase 1st order and conversion is 80% now
there is another reaction of 1st order gas phase and reaction is A=2B.. Now in this reaction
conversion will be high or low?

4)draw horizontal tube.. Mass flow is 100 and length is 10 m now tell me how will you select the
pipe. Draw velocity profile for laminar and turbulent.. Now tell me in which flow cost will be high
of pipe.. Draw cost vs reynolds number profile.. Draw cost vs dia profile for kamina and turbulent
both..

5)now draw pressure vs length graph in pipe.. Now in turbulent flow.. What the diff between
them.. Now velocity vs length graph.

6) draw 1 2 shell and tube HE and tell me about different parts of it. Now one oil with inlet and
outlet temp with mass flow rate and cooling fluid is with inlet and outlet temp is given.. Now tell
me between double pipe and she'll and tube heat exchanger which one required higher heat
transfer area.. What is correction factor.. Show me how in 1 2 shel and tube counter current and
Co corrent flow happen.. Tell me in which lmtd will be higher in double pipe or 1 2 she'll and tube
for this Q..

7)draw one wall. And there is uniform heat generation in middle of the wall.. Draw temp profile
inside it.. Now draw temp profile for out side wall.. If i increase the outside temple of air.. Now
draw whole profile again.
8) in distillation column in which part there is large ralative volatility.. Where pressure will be
highest... Now everything is same and i half the reflux. Tell me which parameters will change..
What about compositions.

9) they told me to draw two flat plates. One plate is moving in right direction and other one is in
left direction.. Told me to draw velocity profile. I drew wrong one then they asked me many
counter Q and then at the end they trapped me and I have to told them that sry sir i am not able
to understand what to now.. So don't give wrong otherwise they will make you gonna fall in
trape.

Ok tell me what's the unit of thermal diffusivity.

Thank you

1. They ask me about my mtech .. how much sub you did study in masters in 1st semi.

2. Tell me your prefrance order of subject.

HT-

1. kya pada he HT me.

2. Shell and tube me tube side fouling hogi to kya hoga.

3. Film kaise resist kargi.

4. Effect on flow area and give us an corillation

5. After giving ko relation tell me ht coeff. Depends on which main factor.

6. Conduction pe kaise depend karega.

7.diterboilder me 0.3 for cooling and 0.4 for hot kyu hoga significant resone.

8. Temp profile in shell and tube

9. Shell side pass how u determine

MT

1. Kya padke aii ho MT me

2. Cooling tower working

3. Mass transfer profile in cooling tower.

4. Heat transfer profile in cooling tower

5. If I give u 3 solutions

1) salt+ water

2) kerosene and water

3) methanol+water

6. Give m azotropic curve and what is min. Boiling azotrope.

7. T-xy diagram explain

8. What is relative humidity.

9. Phychometric chart explain karo.

FM

1. Venturimeter pressure vs length graph

2.Velocity vs length graph

3. Orifice meter velocity and pressure vs lenght 4.what is the difference between 1,2 and 3
graph.

5. Orifice plate vo pressure drop kargi to us point pe kaise rahega( actully i draw a just what
similar graph so he correct me here is sudden pressure drop)

6. If drop of bubble is drop from certain height what forces are applied on it

7. Velocity vs height profile

8. If it is vaccum then what will happen

9. What happen if drag force is absent on velocity of fluid.

CRE

1. So anurag you are doing your masters and you studied advance cuemical reaction so what
you fell different what you studied different.
2. Tell me how you find order of reaction if conc. Vs time data is given.

1 chemistry ke sir aye and unhone chemistry ke q. Puchne lage

What is aldehydic groups, ketonic group, acidic group glycerol cantain what.

Khatam huva interview bye khatam 😅 sukun k sass li

*HT*

1. What is tube side velocity, in HEX what will happen if we will increase it?

2. How to find the balance between high and low tube side velocity?

3. What is deittus bolter eqn, and sieder tatte eqn when to apply it? What is 'k' in it?

4. Two fluids of different prandtl number are given, which one to prefer for efficient HT?

5. What is dirt factor? How it affects the heat transfer

6. If 1 tube is blocked in shell and tube HEX, then how it will affect the HT coefficient?

7. Which method do you use for HEX design?

8. Design a HEX by that method for given fluids

9. Draw temperature profile of HEX of 1 shell 1 tubes pass, 1 shell 2 tube pass.

10. What is this this temperature cross? Out of above 2, in which scenario it is possible?

11. Draw the temperature profile in plate heat exchanger ( ye maine bola bhi nahi tha ☹️)
*MT*

1. How will you design a multicomponent distillation column?

2. Given feed has 3 components A,B,C with given that A,B are more volatile than C. Find out
the height and number of trays of such column which separates all three.

3. α(ΑB) and α(AC) are given, you get 2 equilibrium curves, for 3 components, then how will you
get number of trays for the same column separating 3 components, using McCabe thiele
method?
4. What will happen if R < Rmin ? (he asked what will happen on x vs y curve instead of actually
logical explanation)

5. What is T dry bulb and T wet bulb

*CRE*

1. How to determine order and rate constant of reaction?

2. What is integral and differential method of analysis? Which one to use when?

3. Draw k vs T graph

4. What is selectivity?

5. For reactions, A + B ---> R (desired with rate constant k1) and B + R ---> S (undesired with
rate constant k2),

Design the reactor scheme, how will you maximise the production of desired product? Also draw
the curve for (C(r)/Cao) for various (k1/k2)

*FM and baki random*

1. What is difference between pressure and stress?

2. Explain the working of solar cell

3. What is pressure reading in front tyre of bike?

4. What is more elastic rubber or metal?

5. What is pH? Define pH scale. If I have 10-⁸ HCL, what is it's pH value?

My priorities

HT, FM,MT,CRE

No question from Cre asked

1) copper and iron slab side by side with different temp at one's end draw temp profile

2)gap between slabs (Fe &Cu) filled with vaccum draw temp profile and justify that

3) gap now filled with air draw profile and justify that
4) difference at the end point temp on cu slab end temp

5) difference in all three cases in rate of HT

6) take one slab wall temp T1 and T2 draw temp profile if it's Cu

7)now assume it's Fe now draw profile with same wall temp

8) will the slope be same?

9) remove slab now take a Cu cylinder with wall fixed temp

Draw profile ( radial)

10) now remove Cu with Fe and draw temp profile

11) now assume u have cylinder

On with center as T1 temp

And one with T1 as outer temp

Draw temp profile at SS

12) in which case rate will be high

13) tell me exact maths how does it(temp) drop

Fm

1)Draw Venturi meter

2) principal

3) why expansion side has small angle

4) if we make manometer after any length will Q be same

5) if I apply pump that can throw flow till 1km and there I apply increase in dia will pressure
recover

6) ok it's increase dia 1/2 km

Will pressure recover

7) what are flow meters where is is used

8) what are mass flow meters, basic principle of mass flow meter

Mass

1)dF of mass

2) what is absorption

3) what happen if amonia and water were in equilibrium and I increase water again and again

4)what Is distillation , DF force in it

5) what is relative volatility, is it constant in column

6) draw txy and pxy diagram

7) why there is gap between graph txy

8) how can we increase it or decrease it

9) what happen if we increase temp in pxy and what happen if we increase pressure in txy

10) what is Charles law

11) use Charles law for txy to relate P

12) what is ph , rang of ph

13) tell me what is concention on H+ or h30 ions if ph is 0

1. Modes of HT in HEX

2. Is radiation possible in HEX

3. How will radiation vary wrt roughness

4. Why solar cells are shiny if radiation is max at high roughness

5. Shell n tube (pressure drop variation wrt tube dia... Baffles.. increasing passes)
6. Why copper is not used in HEX

7. Pump: NPSH

8. How much above cn we pump the water(I said infinite... bt..🥲they didn't look convinced at
all)

9. How does cavitation vary with pipe dia(explain in the eqn form)

10. A rxn is giving more conversion in CSTR than in PFR.. why?

11. Series parallel rxn graphs

12. Txy plot

13. what would u do to increase the distance betn the bubble pt and dew point curve..

14. If water boils and condenses at the same temp(100°C)... Then how come there is diff in the
temp in the Txy curve?

15. Stress pressure difference

16. Wet bulb dry bulb temp meaning

Where is it used

date: 1st dec

Venue: BARC mumbai

interwiew class room me hua tha

panel me 5 log the,2 female aur 3 male, sab dur dur baithe the aur samne ek whiteboard tha.

I went inside at 10:20 am and wished everone goodmorning, they asked me to sit down. And
then

1)Shivam tell me about yourself

2) so shivam u are selected through gate right?

3) what was ur gate score?

4)Rank? (29)
5)sukun ki life nhi chahiye kya shivam? why barc not psu?

6) Ok shivam please write down ur 4 favourite subject on board in short form and we will ask
questions in same order

ans: I wrote down MT, CRE, HT, FM

7) Please write down the names of mass transfer operations which u have listned so far

8) What is difference between distillation and extraction?

9) Which one to choose when?

10) assume our solute is not non-volatile and both process are feasible then which one will we
prefer?

11) Money is not a concerned tell some more deciding factors?

12) Why we cant attain high purity in solvent extraction?

13) What are the conditions required to attain maximum purity?

14) which arrangement we will use for maximum purity?

15) Explain multistage counter current extraction technique

16) What is the technical term for that box?

17) Draw equilibrium curve

18) Explain single unit in detail

19) which streams are in equilibrium? and how to find their compositions?

20) how will we find the extract and raffinate composition if contacting equipment is not ideal?
Explain with equations ( I used mixing and lever arm rule to write down equations)

21) what are those intersecting lines?

After asking these they shifted to CRE

22) Ok shivam lets say i want to build a batch reactor at industrial level so how will i do it.
( i thought the question was about scaling up so i went in that direction that first we have to do it
a lab scale then dimensions less number stuff but they stopped me and said no no no, dont
scale up just build a batch reactor for A->B )

23) How to find that rate expression?

24) how to measure concentration vs time?

👍
25) tell me some more units of concentration ( i got stucked here for a moment then one mam
gave me hint " You have qualified jee advanced shivam think ", Got that

25) what are the methods to find out rate expression? explain both

26) Now tell me the finishing part how to calculate volume of reactor?

After these they shifted to HT

27) Where is heat transfer used in industry?

28) what are different types of heat exchanger?

29) when to use which one?

30) draw detail diagram of shell and tube heat exchanger? ( one mam told me to drwaw 1/2 )

31) label all the parts in diagram

32) can you tell some name of parts used which are not in diagram?

33) can u please explain more about tie rods and spacers?

34)whats purpose of baffles?

35)Do we have other types of baffles? And what do you mean by this baffle cut percentage?

36) when will we use these ones?

37) shivam if i want to use this heat exchanger as condenser then in which side will i pass
vapor?

38) do we have to do any modifications in HX for this?

39) why we prefer 1/2 more than 1/1?

40) so why not 1/4?

41) what kind of complexity increase?

42) Ok other than that one thing also increase can you think of it? ( they ultimately wanted to
hear pressure drop XD)

43) what are the factors which are kept in mind while designing HX?

44)how do we calculate h.t.c in tube flow?

45) in which condition do we use this dittus boelter?

after these they shifted to FM

46) shivam what are the ways to measure flowrate of flowing fluid?

47) please explain orifice meter in detail and derive the expression for velocity of fluid

48) whats that equation ( Bernoulli )? what does it represent? when can we use that?

49) where are the losses occuring?

50) if i have a pipeline and i am measuring velocity with orifice meter at one point and with
venturi meter at other point will i get same velocity?

51) why? then how to obtain actual velocity?

52) whats that correction factor? how do we get that?

53) it i flow oil instead of water what will change in this equation?

54) Ok shivam lets say we have a pipeline wit its end open to atmosphere and water is flowing
in it and there is orifice meter attached to it in between. please draw pressure vs lenth graph for
water.

after this they told me to sit down again and then asked me little bit about my intern then about
my travelling and staying.

thankyou you can go.

I came out at 11:48 amz

interwiew went for 1 hr 28 min, you won't realise how fast time will pass.
goodluck 👍👍
*Fav subjects*

*HT, MT, FM and CRE*

*Heat Tranfer*

1. What are similarities in first three subjects?

2. What are the types of heat transfer?

3. Write its basic equations?

4. There are two bodies one with temp 400°C and other 200°C and other other two bodies with
400 and 100°C..how much Heat is trasfered by first object in both cases?

5. One cylindrical horizontal rod divided in 3 section first and last are insulated on surfaces and
centre portion is left open to atmosphere..draw temp profile?

Why this temp profile only?

6.On which factor HTC will depend

7. Write equation correlating this all factors?

8. What is this k term?

9. In this three section case how will you calculate HTC?

10. Write its correlation

11. You have HE of given construction with inlet and outlet temp of Hot and cold fluid given....

How will you reduce outlet temp of exit hot fluid without changing HE construction?

12. How can you reduce exit temp by changing construction of HE?

*Mass Tranfer*

1. You have Air+ co2 mixture how will you reduce co2 content in mixture?

2. Draw diagram of absorption equilibrium and operating line in graph form?

3. How will you calculate stages of column?

4. If there is Air + co2+ H2S mixture now how will find concentration of exit H2S for given
column that you have designed previously?

5. In this corona pandemic situation why it is getting more dangerous in winter than
summer?(not able to anwer conviniently)

6. When you sneeze you have droplet of sneeze..how will it get evaporated...write relation for
time taken for complete evaporation?

7. Derive this relation(not able to derive)

8. What will happen if air flowrate is increased will rate of evaporation increase?

9. How will you get this Psat?

*Fluid Mechanics*

1. What is Economic pipe?(not answered)

2. You have done scale up right? how will you scale up given system of two tanks with pump
from pilot to large scale.

3. Which factor will remain constant while doing scale up.

*****Interview over*****

In 2nd and 3rd question there was long time discussion.

As my previous job was of Technology tranfer thats why they asked this question? But i don't
know i was wrong or right

They were giving lot of hints for bigger problems in which we had to think

We had to explain everything on Black Board due to social distancing norms of Covid

I felt 1hr 15min like 30mins time 😅

😊
You will not understand after coming out that how was your interview either good or bad?
Because panel is very much friendly and you will really enjoy that 1 hr with them

Apart from final results Interview expereince was very much enjoyable!!
: In Heat transfer they

Asked tell mode of heat transfer

And define all the modes in Heat exchanger...

And the draw 2-4 HE and U tube Heat exchanger

And how can be say u tube is better than Shell and tube

And a lot of cross questions.

2. In cre they told me to draw pfr with flowrate Q and concentration C of 90% conversion

Now an extra stream of Q/2 flowrate has added in middle of pfr now find the conversion

Then they removed the extra stream and then told how can be increase the conversion

And lot of cross questions....

3. Designe of adsorption tower and too many cross questions

Really frustrating

4. And last is fm

There is tank on 2 storey building at hight H from ground

And there is also a tank in the underground we have to pull the water from the bottom tant to top
tank

How you decide the pump

And they really grilled in pump portion even single parts of the pump ....

And atlast told if you are already persuing research in IITM then why BARC...🤣
Interview over in 1hr 10 min approx...

Modes of heat transfer

* Why negative sign in fourier law

* Why for radiation heat transfer temperature difference not required.

*One question on temp profile

* Shell and tube heat exchanger 1-1 diagram

* Baffles uses

* Why not to increase ht coefficient decrease baffle spacing

*Major pressure drop

* Priority liquids for heat transfer in tube and shell.

* Why not put high pressure liquid in shell

* How to design heat exchanger

Thermo

* Why a particular reaction happens

* What is entropy

* Minimum work require to separate two gases

* Simple question on turbine

* How to transfer ht from low temp to high temp

*Draw T-S diagram for vapor compression cycle

* COP, how to find, variation with surrounding temp

* How to convert a refrigerator into A. C.

Cre

* Some question pfr conversion version distance .

* Why study cre

* A question on finding best combination of reaction for desired rxn

Fluids

* NPSH

* What changes in suction line to decrease cavitation

* Variation of NPSH with temp.

Cre-

make a batch reactor ,

reaction is occurring from A to B .. first order given ..how to calculate rate constant ,if another
reaction is added in parallel to this ..with 0 order ..how to find k1 and k2 now ,(you are only
given to calculate concentration of A not other products),how to increase selectivity ,
temperature and concentration changes and how the selectivity be varying , preferred reactor
order like which one be placed first cstr or pfr

Ht-

types of heat transfer ,write eqn associated with them,given a metallic plate with air flowing on
one side at 100 deg C and on the other side 30 deg C ..draw temperature profile ,does radiation
changes with distance from source

fm-

draw characteristic curve for a pump with head and flow flow rate ,a question related to how the
pump be placed like the best setup ,npsh calculation ,two plates with one having velocity in
positive x and one in negative x ..draw velocity profile

Mt-

Dalton law , Raoult law ,is it valid for all ,if not what is equation for them,in which mode of Mt we
use this ,HTU ,NTU

..

there was some random question during cre ..what happens as we go up in atmosphere , how
cooking is different from that at the plain area ,is cooking a chemical or physical reaction

BARC questions:

Date-21-12-20
Subject order-HT,FM,MT,CRE

1.modes of heat transfer and their governing equations

2.consider a pipe containing steam at 150 celcius. How will u identify it in plant? What is the
coating over the insulation in pipe..(they provide ans aluminium sheet).why aluminium sheet is
coated? How is critical radius of insulation helps in determining radius of insulation. How much
more radius is to be used than Rc? Tell the dominant mechanism before and after the critical
radius of insulation?

3.consider a plate of metal of some thickness. Left side of it is a fluid moving at 100 celcius and
right side of plate a stagnant fluid of 30 celcius. Draw the complete temperature profile. How will
the temperature profile change if I increase conductivity to 2 times? How will it affect heat
transfer through the plate?

4.Draw rotameter diagram and tell the basic principle. If I increase the flowrate from Q to 2Q
then how float position is changed and why? What are the three forces acting. As buoyancy and
gravity force are constant ...what is that factor which makes float reaches to its new equilibrium
position and come to rest? Is drag force continuously increase or specifically increase?

5.what are equilibrium relationship in mass transfer?how can we get equilibrium relationship for
absorption? consider NH3 and CO2 absorption in water...draw the y-x curve for both? Will they
be same or different? What happens in sprite bottle if u remove its cap...draw the y-x curve for
both the situation before cap opening and after cap opening?

6.Draw a packed bed reactor...A--B ,zero order reaction, draw the rA vs length curve and Ca vs
length curve... write down material balance for PBR.

7.for a given conversion, space time is more for CSTR or PFR?

IOCL - CH 2019 || AIR 45 Kaustubh Tripathi
Date of Interview - 9th July 2019

Company - Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL)

Profile - Officer/Engineer through GATE

Location - Delhi

Interviewee - Kaustubh Tripathi (GATE 2019 AIR 45)

GATE Score: 806

IOCL has always been most preferred Maharatna company for aspirants who have
desired a refinery job. My interview location for IOCL was Indian Oil Institute of
Petroleum Management (IIPM), which is their facility set up in Gurgaon. The facility is
huge and lush. The interviewees were asked to report at 8.30 AM. After the entry, the
security started distributing interviewee badges/ID cards. Once the ID cards were
collected by the candidate, they could leave for the respective reporting rooms.

After I entered the building, I was guided to a large hall. After a little wait, the team of
HR arrived and started to brief us about IOCL and its subsidiaries. We were informed that
CPCL (Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited) is also now a part of IOCL and the perks
and salaries will be the same with a constraint that job location will be in Chennai. The
briefing lasted for around 35 minutes after which we were guided to document
verification room.

The document verification room had a round table around which the aspirants sat and
were called one-by-one by the HR team to get their documents verified. The procedure
of document verification was very strict and you are advised to carry all the proofs of the
category you are applying in.

IMPORTANT INSTRUCTION: Carry all the proofs of the category - OBC/SC/ST/EWS. The
document verification process is very thorough and prompt. They will not allow you to
take interview if sufficient proofs are not available.

Also, do not panic if you forgot print out of any document. IIPM has in-house printing
facility which IOCL was generous enough to let the aspirants use.
After my document verification, I was asked to wait for my GD/GT. After around 40
minutes, 8 people from the room were called into the GD/GT room. The GD/GT room
consisted of a round table and 8 chairs. The GD/GT panel had two people, one lady and
other a gentleman. As the 8 people entered the room, we were instructed to sit
according the names being called out. After we took our position, we were given a pencil
and paper each.

The lady addressed us all and delivered the instructions of GD. We were then given the
topic. I do not exactly remember the topic word by word but the discussion was upon

GD - Would Make in India initiative of Government lead to decrease in FDI?

The discussion started with me speaking at second position and formally introducing the
topic. After the GD was finished, we were given instructions about GT. I do not exactly
remember the topic word by word, but the our GT was on

GT - What steps could IOCL take to reduce air pollution in areas surrounding its
refineries?

We had to come up with solutions and suggest a monetary estimate of the process. The
GT was for 12 minutes, total. After we concluded our discussion, the HR pointed our
flaws in discussion. She told us that we suggested the steps but could not come up with
a viable financial plan.

We were then instructed to leave for the waiting hall. After that I had to wait for my
interview. The wait time was around 1.5 hours before I was called for my interview. The
panel consisted of three people - two gentlemen and one lady. My interview was
moderately difficult.

Me - May I come in?

P - Yes. Please.

Me - Good morning Ma'am. Good morning Sirs.

P - Good Morning Mr. Tripathi. So your name is Kaustubh. Do you know what is the
meaning of your name?

P - Nice. So Mr. Kaustubh, tell us something about yourself.

P - Okay. Where have you done your summer training from?

Me - GAIL Pata plant Sir. I worked in Gas Cracker Unit.

P - Okay. So what are the major products produced by GAIL Pata plant?

P - Do you know from where did the raw materials come for the plant?

P - Have you seen the distillation columns in the plant?

P - What is the working principle of a distillation column?

P - What do you understand by flooding?

P - What is meant by weeping of tray?

P - How will you prevent weeping of a tray?

P - Do you know the temperature of the furnace in G.C.U.?

By this time, I answered all the questions correctly and confidently. The panel was
convinced that I studied my summer training properly.

P - Okay so can you tell us your favorite topics?

Me - Sir CRE and FM. (I gave an explanation for why I chose those.)

P - See, FM is a very common topic. We have not seen any candidate choose
thermodynamics.

Me - *sits there clueless*

P - Will you answer questions from Thermodynamics?

Me - Sir, Thermodynamics might not be my strongest hold but I will try to the best of my
capabilities.

P - Do you know about Maxwell Relations?

Me - *waits for 10 seconds*. Yes sir. I think those are the four equations which relate the
important thermodynamic state parameters - enthalpy, internal energy, Gibbs energy
and Helmholtz energy.

P - Yes, right. Can you right those, now?

Me - Yes I can try.

P - Okay. Take this marker and go to the board and write the four equation.

Me - *walks to the board and writes the four equations properly*

At this moment one of the panelist gets up and stands a little far away from me. He
points at my equation and starts to ask me questions

P - What is Gibbs energy?

P - What is this 'A'?

P - What is Helmholtz free energy?

P - What is the difference between enthalpy and internal energy?

P - What is temperature?

At this point, the panelist was convinced with my answers. He went back and sat on his
chair. After this he asked me my last technical question.

P - What is the difference between diffuse and specular reflection?

With this my technical round was complete and I was confident that I performed nice.
After this the third panelist started to ask me HR questions.

P - Why do you want to join a PSU? Why don't you go abroad for a MS or MBA? You
may have a good career there too.

P - If given a choice between other PSU and IOCL, which one will you choose?

P - Where do you see yourself 5 years later?

P - Do you have any brother or sister?

The panel sat quiet for 5-7 seconds and nodded at me. I was indicated to go. My
interview lasted for 31 minutes and I was very confident of selection. I was a little scared
because number of UR seats were 24 and my GATE rank was 45. The only hope I had was
if I get very good marks in GD/GT and Interview.

Verdict - Selected for post of Officer/Engineer.

NPCIL - CH 2019 || AIR 45 Kaustubh Tripathi

Date of Interview - 24th May 2019

Company - Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL)

Profile - Executive Engineer - Chemical Engineering (through GATE)

Location - Mumbai

Interviewee - Kaustubh Tripathi

I had my NPCIL Interview on 24/05/2019 and in this answer I'll explain to you everything
in great detail about NPCIL.
I reached the NPCIL guest house in Anushakti Nagar, Mumbai at 8 AM. There is a
counter outside NPCIL guest house where they distribute the slip for interview call
number. I got slip number 6.

Important Suggestion 1 - stand in line as early as possible to get a good token number
and saving yourself for the torturous wait for the whole day.

Important Suggestion 2 - If possible avoid token number 8 to 12. They are dangerously
close to the panel's lunch time. So there is a possibility that they'll cut short your
interview. So if you get rejected you'll keep on wondering if that was due to their lunch
time or your performance.

Back to point, after taking my token number, I was directed to the verification room
where they ask you to fill some minor details. They call you by your roll number to get
your documents verified. Once the document verification is done, you can go to the
building where interview are conducted.

There was a lady outside who kept a counter of all the interview timings and roll calls.
She was a friendly 45ish year helpful woman, who looked like she just wanted to enjoy a
nice morning at home instead of sitting between jobless engineers waiting for interview.
My interview started at 12.20 AM and finished at 1.18 AM, lasting for around 55 minutes,
excluding some minutes in communication.

My branch is Chemical Engineering and from now on, I'll tell you details relevant to
Chemical Engineers. The interview is very random. They can ask you whatever they want.
They asked me to write my favourite subjects but they asked me questions on them only
for 7-9 minutes. Rest of my interview was on the topics which I didn't write. My interview
was based on basics from class 11th Chemistry, a little of class 12th physics and rest was
a test of advances thinking skills.

Me - Good morning Ma'am, Good morning Sirs.

Takes seat

Panel (P) - It's afternoon Mr. Tripathi

Me - Oh! I feel like I'm already moving ahead.

P - laughs So Mr. Kaustubh, would you like some Tea? We are just about to have some
tea.

Me - Sir, I would absolutely love to have it but right now I'd instead focus on the
interview

P - Okay. (The panel orders tea for themselves)

So Mr. Tripathi, tell me something about yourself.

P - (interacts with me for about 2 minutes)

P - Okay Mr. Tripathi, you know that this is a very technical interview and those
introduction was just to make you comfortable. From now on we will start your interview
which may or may not lead you to your job.

Me - Okay Sir, sure.

P - There is a cylinder fully filled with water at room temperature closed from all ends.
Draw the free body diagram of all the forces in the system.

P - Now, the same cylinder is kept horizontally instead of vertically. Draw all the forces in
the system.

P - Now, suppose I make a hole at the bottom of both the cylinders. Tell us what will
happen?

P - (Partially satisfied) We want to know the variation of height in the tank with time.

Me - (Derivation of expression took me 4 minutes)

P - Okay so according to you it would be a parabolic variation?

Me - Yes Sir, it would be a parabolic variation. However, I haven't considered the affect
of area in the expression, assuming that the hole you mentioned is small.

P - (Second person from panel intervenes) What if my diameter of hole is one fourth the
diameter of cylinder?

Me - (Derivation took me 3 more minutes) Sir it'll follow the same parabolic profile but
with different slope.

P - Okay Mr. Tripathi now show us how will you apply Bernoulli's equation between the
top surface and the hole to find out the expression for velocity at exit?

Me - shows the derivation

P - So according to your how many terms would be there in Bernoulli's equation?

Me - 3 Sir.

P - No. There would be 6 terms. Think again.

Me - Umm Sir, according to me there will be three terms as I have ignored hydrostatic
variation of pressure.

P - Mr. Tripathi, have you heard of Geyser?

Me - Yes
P - I want a Geyser. What should be the power rating of it?

Me - Sir that depends on what volume do you wish to install.

P - Suppose I want to bathe in 60 degree celcius water. I also want a 25 LPM flow rate
and water is available at 30 degree initially. Find the power rating of the geyser.

Me - Writes the expression and puts the values

P - Are you sure that this is the answer?

Me - Yes Sir, according to me, it's correct.

P - Very Good.

P - Okay Mr. Tripathi, now suppose instead of using electricity, I want to use steam in
Jacket to heat the water. Design my Geyser and find the flowrate of steam required.

Me - Sir, I'd need more data.

P - No, this is the only data we have. You have to assume everything. You are a designer
now

Me - Okay so I'll take steam at 110 degree and take it down to 100 degree water. Latent
heat of condensation is much higher than specific heat and thus I'll use that heat to heat
the water up to 60 degree.

P - Why did you take 110 degree? Are you sure that 110 is an economical steam
temperature?

Me - No sir, I'm not sure. I took it because you gave me the flexibility to design all by
myself.

Panel - Okay tell us what is the economic operating temperature of steam?

Me - Sir I don't know.

P - Okay. How will you make my Geyser more efficient?

P - Do you know anything about Thermal power plant?

Me - I'm not sure, but yes I know a thing or two.

P - Okay design a thermal power plant for us.

Me - Sir, I would need more data.

P - Okay for now tell us how a thermal power plant works?

P - Is there any way to make it more efficient?

P - Is there anyway we can remove that pump and it'll still work?

P - What are the different thermodynamic cycles you know of?

Me - Sir, I only know of Carnot cycle.

P - Okay tell us.

P - Can you see this table bell? What do you think it's made of?

Me - Stainless steel.

P - Do you know components of Stainless steel?

Me - No Sir, I'm not sure. But if I have to guess, I'll say Iron and Tin.

P - Iron is correct but Tin?

Me - Sir, as I said, I'm not sure.

P - Okay why is Stainless steel used in reactors and everyday components?

Me - Sir because it's corrosion resistance and can sustain a huge amount of everyday
wear and tear.

P - Okay. What do you know of corrosion?

P - Have you heard about pH scale?

P - How is it defined?

P - Why do you think it is from 0 to 14 and not -7 to +7?

Me - Sir, I think I'm not sure but it is something related to concentration of H ions in
water.

P - Okay but why isn't it -7 to 7?

Me - Sir, I think I don't know the answer to that. Answers something

P - Okay. Do you think pH can be negative?

Me - No.

P - Why?

Me - Because then concentration would be too high.

P - Actually it is possible for pH to be Negative.

P - Okay Mr. Tripathi, suppose we have two flasks. In one flask we have a solution of pH
5 and other we have pH 9. In which one you think corrosion would take place?

Me - Both.

P - Why?

Me - Explains.

P - Are you sure?

Me - Yes sir. (Explains more)

P - Okay Me. Tripathi, you may leave now

Me - Thank you very much Sir.

Also Sir, I think the composition of stainless steel is Iron + Chromium.

Panel - Okay. *Smiles*

I was asked to wait for 2 minutes outside the office. After 2 minutes, the medical slip
came from inside and I was notified that I qualified the interview and was eligible for
medical test.

The same day, they took the qualified 44 candidates from all branches to Tarapur Atomic
Power Station (TAPS) Hospital for medical tests, which were scheduled on next day.
Around evening they informed me that my Medical test is clear. We returned from TAPS
by evening and they dropped us safely to the places we desired.

Verdict - Selected for Medical Test.

BARC - CH 2019 || AIR 8 Anubhav Kumar Singh

Date of Interview - 23rd May 2019

Company -Bhabha Atomic Research Center (B.A.R.C.)

Profile -Scientist - Chemical Engineering (through GATE) Location -

Mumbai Interviewee - Anubhav Kumar Singh (GATE 2019 AIR 8)

GATE Score: 896

My BARC interview was scheduled on morning of 23rd of May 2019 at Anushakti Nagar,
Mumbai. My BARC interview experience was very motivating and encouraging as it help
me prepare for all the interviews about to come. I reported to the venue at 8.00 AM and
proceeded to the document verification hall. After the document verification, I was
directed to the interview waiting hall. There, we were offered snack box while
simultaneous roll call of other candidates was going on. Finally after a little wait, my turn
for interview was announced.

As I entered the interview hall, I saw 5 members in the Panel. I greeted them and then
the interview started with little of informal conversation to get me comfortable. They
asked my favorite topics to which I replied - Heat Transfer, Thermodynamics and Fluid
Mechanics.

P - What are the different Modes of Heat Transfer?

P - Why do we have Negative sign in Fourier law?

P - Why the temperature difference is not required in heat transfer by Radiation?

P - Can you draw temperature profiles of heat transfer through a straight slab when one
end is connected to a heat sink and other to a heat reservoir?

P - Can you draw the temperature profile in the same conditions when the body is a
circular wire?

P - What will the temperature profile if the heat source is placed at the center of the
wire?

P - Draw the diagram of a Shell and tube 1-1 heat exchanger.

P - What are the uses of Baffles in a heat exchanger?

P - What's baffle spacing?

P - Is there any relationship between Heat Transfer Coefficient and Baffle spacing?

P - Where do we have major pressure drop in Heat exchanger?

P - How do we prioritize the liquids & gas in tube and shells?

P - Why don't we put high pressure liquid in shell?

P - How do we design Heat exchanger?

P - Why does a particular reaction happens? What's the driving force of a chemical
reaction?

P - What is Entropy?
P - What's the minimum work to separate two Gases?

P - What is turbine?

P - How does a turbine work?

P - How to transfer heat from low temperature to high temperature?

P - Draw T-S Diagram for Vapor compression cycle.

P - Define COP, how do we calculate it?

P - How does COP vary with Surrounding?

P - How to convert a refrigerator into AC?

P - Why do we study C.R.E.?

P - Explain N.P.S.H.

P - What changes can we make to decrease the problem of cavitation?

P - Can you describe variation of N.P.S.H. with temperature?

With this my extensive technical round was over. There were a few HR type questions
following. I answered all their answers correctly and satisfied them with all my answers.

Verdict - Selected.

NPCIL - CH 2019 || AIR 5 Atindranath Ghosh

Date of Interview - 24th May 2019

Company - Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (N.P.C.I.L.)

Profile - Executive Engineer - Chemical Engineering (through GATE)

Location - Mumbai

Interviewee - Atindranath Ghosh (GATE 2019 - AIR 5)

GATE score - 914

I reached the NPCIL guest house in Anushakti Nagar, Mumbai at 8 AM. NPCIL conducts
interview by using slip distribution system which is done on first come first serve basis. I
stood in the queue and got slip number 5.

After taking my token number, I was directed to the verification room. They call you by
your roll number to get your documents verified. Once the document verification is
done, you are asked to go to the building where interview are conducted. Before that
there is ample time to have breakfast which is served free of cost by the tokens given by
NPCIL.

My branch is Chemical Engineering and during the interview they can ask you whatever
they want. They can even ask questions from your internship experience though I didn't
know that NPCIL asks questions from that too.

Me - Good morning Sirs.

P - Take a seat, Mr. Atindra

Me - Thank you

P- You have secured AIR 5, so I believe that you are aiming for Maharatnas, aren’t you?

Me - (I tried to answer it but they seemed unsatisfied)

P - So Mr. Ghosh, tell us something about yourself.

Me - (answers) I also told them about my internship in 2 companies, one was in SAIL and
other was in an Investment Bank.

P - What type of work did you do during your tenure in Investment Bank?

P - Among Chemical Engineering, Investment Banking and Computer Coding, which field
are you interested in and why?

P - Okay Mr.Atindra. Tell me what all have you seen in Bhilai Steel Plant.

Me - (Answers about the coke production and the coal chemicals extracted from the flue
gas)

P - What was the temperature at the top of the chimney?

Me - I don’t know about the exact temperature but it must be around 1000 K

P - What all gases come out from the chimney when the raw coal burns?

P - Can you write a reaction for combustion of methane?

P - Can you draw the characteristic curve of centrifugal pump?

Me - (I drew the Graph between flow rate (Q) and Head (H))

P - Can you tell me the way to increase the head without changing the inlet flow rate?

Me - Yes, we can change it by changing the impeller speed.

P - Tell me about the affinity laws.

P - Draw a water filled tank and attach a nozzle at the bottom. What will be the velocity
of the fluid coming out? Derive the expression.

P - Okay. What if you put up another empty tank to the outlet of nozzle? When will it
come to equilibrium?

P - What will happen if you place a pump?

P - What parameter will you consider for designing for a pipe?

P - How will you boil water at 60 degree Celsius?

P - (Asks some more questions on my previous internship experience)

Me - I tried to answer them.

P - Thank you for your time Mr. Atindra. Have a nice day.

Me- Thank you Sir.

My interview went well, I answered most of the questions correctly. Unfortunately, I

didn’t get selected for the medical round. I think that the question they asked me
regarding my rank (AIR 5) was the turning point. I would advise all the top ranker to
prepare a good answer for that question. Generally, top ranker do not join NPCIL after
being selected and they have observed it over years.

Verdict - Not Selected

BHEL- CH 2019 || AIR 45 Kaustubh Tripathi

Date of Interview - 19th July 2019

Company - Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL)

Profile - Engineer/Executive Engineer - Chemical Engineering (through Written Exam)

Location - Delhi

Interviewee - Kaustubh Tripathi

BHEL does not recruit through GATE anymore. It takes its seperate exam.

BHEL is a Public Sector Undertaking which has ventured into the business of producing
heavy electrical equipments and is recently expanding its span to produce electrical
equipments to cater the demand for renewable sources of energy. My exam for BHEL
was held on 26th of May 2019. Before describing my interview experience for BHEL, I
want you to understand that preparation for written exam of BHEL is not as rigirous as
for GATE. BHEL exam has several components which are not a part of GATE exam and it
focuses on how much you are aware, rather than on how much you actually know.

I qualified the BHEL written exam and the interview call letter was recieved on 9th July
2019. My interview was supposed to be on 19th of July 2019 and reporting was in CGO
Complex, Delhi at 11.15 AM. As I reported, I was directed to document verification hall.
There, the document verification procedure was already going on. My turn came after a
wait of 1 hour and my roll call was alloted for interview. I was directed to have snacks
before I proceeded to the interview hall.

As I entered the interview hall, I was confronted by 9 Panelists. There were 2 female
members and 7 male members. In my opinion, they were very knowledgeable. They were
very sound with their concepts and were asking very relevant questions in depth.

Questions were asked to me by panelists one by one. After one of the panelist was
satisfied, the next asked questions till everyone of them was satisfied.

Panalist 1 -

P - Tell us about yourself Mr. Tripathi

P - What is the meaning of your name?

P - Do you know of solar energy? What is it?

P - What are other forms of renewable energy?

P - Why do we use Lithium in batteries?

P - What is a P-type semiconductor?

P - What is the wavelength of visible light?

Panelist 2 -

P - Mr. Kaustubh, I will give you a situation. Tell me what should you do? So you know
that Sun does not stay at the same place throughout the day. It moves from East to
West. In this case, the solar panels do not recieve light at same intensity throughout the
day. What will you do as a Chemical Engineer, to solve this problem of inconsistent
incidence?

* I answered this question very elaborately using controllers. Panel was very convinced
with my answer *

P - Now that you have mentioned controller, what are the different types of controls that
you know of?

Panelist 3 -

P - What is an autocatalytic reaction?

P - What is an exothermic reaction?

P - What will happen if we increase the temperature of reaction?

P - What will happen to the rate constant of forward reaction and backward reaction if
we inrease the temperature.

P - What will happen to the overall rate constant if we lower the temperature?

P - What is activation energy?

P - What is the advantage of a semibatch reactor over batch reactor?

P - How do we decide when to use a batch process and when to use a continuous
process?

Panelist 4 -

P - What is meant by priming of a pump?

P - Why do we require priming?

P - What is the difference between reciprocating pump and centrifugal pump?

P - What are the different components of Bernoulli's equation?

P - Can you tell the different parts of a centrifugal pump?

Panelist 5 -

P - What other PSU have you applied for?

P - Why would you choose BHEL if you get selected for ONGC or IOCL?

P - What is your favorite activity in your free time?

After this the entire panel seemed pretty convinced with my answers. I answered almost
all the questions properly. My interview lasted for 45 minutes. The panelists were smiling
after my interview was over. There were only 4 vacancies for General category candidate.
I felt pretty confident after the interview.

Verdict - Selected for the post of Engineer Trainee 2019.

GAIL - CH 2019 || AIR 45 Kaustubh Tripathi

Date of Interview - 8th July 2019

Company - Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL), India

Profile - Executive Trainee through GATE

Location - Delhi

Interviewee - Kaustubh Tripathi (GATE 2019 - AIR 45)

GATE Score: 806

My GAIL interview was held on 8th July 2019 at their Noida Training Center. I reported to
the venue at 8.30 AM and was asked to sit in the waiting hall for a while. After this, I was
directed to waiting hall where the document verification was being held. After document
verification, we were directed to have snacks and tea in their dining hall.

Once document verification of 7 people was finished, we were sent to the GD room. GD
room was a conference hall with round table around which 7 people were seated. We
were given our GD topic after a little briefing.

GD Topic - Will complete ban on plastic be good for the society?

After my GD was over, I was directed to wait outside the interview hall. Surprisingly, the
interview panel and GD panel was same. My turn came after 5 candidates.

P - Hello Mr. Tripathi, tell us about yourself.

P - Where do you stay in Delhi?

P - Where did you do your summer internship in?

I did my Summer Training in Pata Plant of GAIL itself.

P - Okay. Who did you report to on first day of your internship?

P - What are the major products of Pata plant?

P - What is the composition of HDPE and LDPE?

P - What is the difference between properties of HDPE and LDPE?

P - What are the tires of your bike made of?

P - What happens when we heat a thermosetting plastic?

I told them in my introduction that I did minor in finance along with major in Chemical
Engineering.

P - Why did you choose finance?

P - What is meant by profitability analysis?

P - What are the different ways to perform profitability analysis?

P - So you do possess a basic understanding of financial terms. Why did you not opt for
MBA?

P - Why did you not go for masters abroad?

By this time, the HR intervened and started asking some questions.

P - Do you like to work in a team or alone?

P - What characteristics will you search for if you are given opportunity to develop your
own team among a given group of people?

The technical round started again after this answer of mine

P - What do you mean by rate of reaction?

P - What will be units of rate constant for a first order reaction?

P - What is composition of LPG?

P - What is the first operation that we do when we receive Gas in our Pata plant?

P - Where do we receive gas from in Pata plant?

P - What gases do we send out in flare?

With this, my technical round was over. Now the interview was reaching a conclusion.

P - Why will you choose GAIL over ONGC and IOCL?

In my belief, the last question was the only reason for why I could not get selected in
GAIL. I did not answer last question properly. My answer was not framed and it was
heavily imbalanced. Through my answer the panel got an impression that I was not as
serious about GAIL as I was about ONGC. They cross questioned me for a while and
ended the interview.

Verdict - Not selected.

BARC - CH 2019 || AIR 45 Kaustubh Tripathi

Date of Interview - 27th May 2019

Company - Bhabha Atomic Research Center (B.A.R.C.)

Profile -Scientist - Chemical Engineering (through GATE)

Location - Mumbai

Interviewee - Kaustubh Tripathi (GATE 2019 AIR 45)

GATE Score: 806

I have heard a plethora of things about experiences of people in BARC interview. Mine
was very different from anything I was prepared for.

My BARC interview was scheduled for 8.30 AM slot on 27th of May 2019. I was staying in
BARC hostel at a very reasonable price of 400 INR per day which was situated about 200
Meters away from interview venue. I reported early because I wanted the first slot for
myself. If you want your interview to get over before lunch, then report to their
conference hall as early as possible and fill the documents as fast as possible.

After filling of some forms, I got my documents verified. This entire procedure took me
about 1 hour. Once my document verification was completed, I was directed to waiting
hall.

After 1 hour 15 minutes, the panel arrived and I was called for the first interview of the
day.

My panel consisted of 5 people - one lady and 4 gentlemen. As soon as I entered the
room, following conversation took place -

Me - Good Morning Ma'am. Good morning Sirs.

Panel (P) - Morning Mr. Kaustubh. Take a seat and make yourself comfortable.

Me - Thank you Sir.

P - So Kaustubh, you had a nice stay here in BARC? Where are you staying?

Me - Sir, I have been staying at BARC hostel and yes, I had a wonderful stay. Bombay is a
nice place.

P - Right. You had your breakfast?

Me - Yes Sir, I ate.

P - Okay. So, have you heard anything about BARC interview previously? Do you know
how do we conduct it?

P - So what was your source of information?

Me - Mostly internet Sir.

P - Okay. So as you said, write down your favorite 4 subjects.

Me - *writes and explains the reason for my choice*

My choices were CRE, FM, MT and HT.

P - Okay Kaustubh so tell us about the driving force in all those cases you have written.

Me - Sir, the driving force in HT is temperature gradient, in MT is concentration gradient

or chemical potential gradient, in FM is Pressure gradient and in CRE it should be Energy
gradient.

P - Okay so when you say Energy gradient, can you show us which energy you are
talking about?

Me - Sir, Gibbs Free Energy.

And now my interview shifted to thermodynamics! I didn't even write thermodynamics in

the list.

(It shows that one has to prepare everything. The panel doesn't care about your choices
a lot. It asks what it wants to ask.)

P - Okay can you tell me what is this Gibbs free energy?

P - So now tell me which law of Thermodynamics is applied when you see a Chemical
reaction?

Me - Sir, first law.

P - Are you sure?

P - Look at those terms in your definition of Gibbs Free Energy. What is this 'S'?

Me - Sir, it's called entropy and it denotes the degree of randomness in system.

P - Which law does it concern?

Me - Second law.

P - Can you give us the statement of second law?

P - Can you give us the statement of first law?

P - Now look at your expression of Gibbs energy and tell us if in a Chemical reaction only
first law is valid?

Me - No sir, I think I was wrong. Here as I can see now, both first and second laws are
valid.

P - Okay. *Acts satisfied*

In the meantime a panelist prepares a question on paper. The question was a reaction A
-> 2B and the rate constant along with the units was given. It was also given that the
reaction was exothermic.

P - What do you think is the order of this reaction?

P - What do you know about Le Ch-atelier's principle?

P - If we increase the pressure where would the equilibrium shift?

P - What will happen if the reaction temperature is increased?

P - If we make the forward and the backward steps both reversible, what do you think
will happen to the conversion?

P - What if we add inert gas to the given reaction mixture?

P - What else can we do to increase the extent of the reaction?

Me - Sir we can work with temperature and pressure of inert to increase the conversion
and extent of the reaction.

P - *unsatisfied*. No, what else other than pressure and temperature should be
added/removed/modified so that we can get more products?

Me - *thinks for a while* Sir, we can use a catalyst in the reaction.

P - Okay. What is the function of a catalyst? How do they work?

Me - Sir, a catalyst carries out the same reaction through an alternate pathway with
lower activation energy. It does not lower the activation energy of the same reaction but
suggests an alternate pathway.

P - Okay. Define Activation Energy.

P - What is Heat of Reaction?

P - *draws enthalpy diagram* What is the enthalpy of product and reactants in the given
diagram?

P - Represent Activation Energy in the given diagram.

Now the panel takes break of 5-10 seconds and asks another round of questions from
FM.

P - Do you know how is pressure drop in a pipe is determined?

Me - Sir Darcey's equation is used to determine pressure drop, theoretically. There is

another more accurate equation called as Colebrook equation which is little more
complicated.

P - What do you think will happen to the pressure drop in a pipe as we go up vertically?

P - What is the function of pump?

P - What is the function of guide vanes in a centrifugal pump?

P - Can you draw a graph of Pressure versus length in a horizontal pipe?

Me - *I drew wrong graph*

P - Listen to the question carefully. Draw pressure versus length, not pressure drop
versus length.

Me - *I corrected the graph*

P - Why do you think it follows this nature?

P - If I have to pump a liquid at a higher elevation, where do you think should I place my
pump with respect to the source?

There other panelist starts to question me about HT

P - So you just drew the curve for pressure versus length. If the same liquid is fed at a
temperature of 80 degree and the walls are at a temperature of 15 degrees, can you
draw the temperature versus length graph?

P - What is the similarity in between those two graphs?

P - If we have to increase shell-side heat transfer coefficient, what changes should we
make in a shell and tube heat exchanger if the fluid flowing has a viscosity 1.5 times
greater than water?

Me - *explains about Baffles and how do we decide their placement depending on

allowable pressure drop*

P - *partially satisfied*

Now, since my interview was the first interview of the day, one of the panelist had not
come on time. At this moment, he enters and takes the seat. He asks me question on MT.

P - Do you know the working principle of distillation columns?

P - What is meant by relative volatility?

P - If we have two mixtures - one with relative volatility of 2 and other with 0.5, in which
case do you think we will require more stages?

Me - Same number of stages in both case, Sir,

P - Are you sure? Think about it again.

Me - Yes. Except for the location of feed tray depending on what is our desired product,
nothing else will change.

P - Okay now what if the mixtures have a relative volatility of 10 and 0.1?

Me - In that case, also, we will require equal number of stages.

P - Okay. Good.

Now the lady interviewer asks me last few questions before I leave

P - What do you think this desk bell is made of?

Me - Stainless steel, Ma'am.

P - What is the composition of stainless steel?

Me - *answers. Same question was asked to me in one of my previous interview*

P - What will happen if we reduce the amount of carbon in the stainless steel?

Me - *answers satisfactorily*

P - Okay.

With this, my interview ended. I made sure that I did not use any fancy terminologies as
the panel is very knowledgeable. Anything absurd that I would say could backfire me.
Thus, I stuck to the basics and tried to answer all their questions with best of my
knowledge.

Verdict - Not selected.

GAIL - CH 2019 || AIR 5 Atindranath Ghosh

Date of Interview - 8th July 2019

Company - Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL), India

Profile - Executive Trainee through GATE

Location - Delhi

Interviewee - Atindranath Ghosh (GATE 2019 - AIR 5)

GATE Score: 914

My GAIL interview was one day before my IOCL interview. I reached the venue in Noida
at 8.00 AM. We were sent to the waiting hall which was their auditorium. Around 9.30
AM, document verification started. They were calling people for document verification in
a batch of 6-7 candidates. After completion of each of the batches, we were sent for GD
round.

GD round was held in a big conference hall with round table at the center.

GD Topics - Are Digital Payments good or bad for financial health of country?

My GD was finished by around 4.30 PM. It was very late by then. I was asked to wait for
my interview turn. My turn finally came at 7.30 PM.

The panel had 6 members - 5 gentlemen and 1 Lady. The panel asked me following
questions -

P - Tell me about yourself.

P - Have you done any internship?

Me - Sir, I have done my summer training with Bhilai Steel Plant.

P - What all did you see in that plant?

P - What is the operating temperature of a blast furnace in Steel plant?

P - Do gas processing plants have Blast furnaces?

P - Tell us any three subjects you are most comfortable with.

P - What is stokes law?

P - Where is it applicable?

P - What are the different types of heat exchanger used in industry?

P - What is the difference between conduction and convection?

P - Which of them is a faster mode of transfer?

P - What is the difference between manometer and barometer?

P - What do you know about vapor compression cycle?

P - How is Vapor compression cycle different from Gas turbine cycle.

P - If you get selected for IOCL, ONGC and GAIL, which of them will you choose and
why?

After this my interview was concluded. It was one of the last interviews of the day and
was over by 8 PM. I tried answering all the questions to the point.

Verdict - Not Selected.

ONGC - CH 2019 || AIR 5 Atindranath Ghosh

Date of Interview - 28th June 2019

Company - Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC)

Profile - A.E.E. (Production) through GATE

Location - Delhi Interviewee - Atindranath Ghosh (GATE 2019 - AIR 5) GATE Score: 914

My ONGC interview was one of the most different experiences of all the interviews I have
ever taken. I reported for the interview at 11.00 AM in Scope Minar, New Delhi. However,
my turn for interview came at 6.15 PM and I was the last candidate to be interviewed. It
was tiring experience to wait all around the day for my chance.
As I entered the building, I was directed to report in Conference hall of ONGC. In the hall,
ONGC officials held a presentation, explaining the pay structure and benefits of working
in ONGC. After the presentation, I was guided to document verification. My document
verification was a smooth process which lasted for about 15 minutes after which I was
directed to have lunch. Post lunch, I was directed to the waiting hall to wait for my turn.

Finally, after 5 hours of waiting, my turn came. I was tired but prepared for what was
about to be asked. As I entered the interview hall, I was welcomed by a panel of 3
members. After exchanging the pleasantries, following questions were asked to me by
the panel -

P - What's the meaning of your name?

P - Tell us something about yourself which isn't written on your CV.

P - What is a heat exchanger?

P - Name few types of heat exchanger that you know of.

P - Explain shell and tube heat exchanger. What is the working principle behind it?

P - Draw 2-4 type heat exchanger and show the inlet & outlet streams.

P - What is meant by floating head? Why it is used?

P - What's the TEMA?

P - What is Reynolds number?

P - How can you differentiate the type of flow in case of tube?

P - What are the advantages and disadvantages of turbulent flow?

P - Did you appear for any other interviews?

P - What are the other companies that you have applied for?

P - Why will you choose ONGC over other PSUs?

My interview lasted for about 15 minutes. Since mine was the last interview of the day,
panelists were taking my interview with patience. I tried answering all their answers
correctly.

Verdict - Selected for the post of A.E.E. (P)

ONGC - CH 2019 || AIR 45 - Kaustubh Tripathi
Date of Interview - 1st July 2019

Company - Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC)

Profile - AEE (Production) through GATE

Location - Delhi

Interviewee - Kaustubh Tripathi (GATE 2019 AIR 45)

GATE Score: 806

ONGC is one of the most desired and reputed Maharatna companies of India and is
famous for providing highest CTC in Chemical Engineering for the profile of Production
Engineer. With world class facilities and reputed work culture, this company has held its
position as one of the most profitable PSUs of the nation. This year, the call for
interviews came a little late than usual. My interview was scheduled on 1st of July 2019.

I reported to Scope Minar, Nirman Vihar at 7.30 AM. After reporting, we were called in
the presentation room where ONGC officials came and briefed the aspirants about work
culture and CTC. The presentation took around 1 hour after which we were informed of
the breakfast and document verification process. We were called in a batch of 7 people
for document verification.

IMPORTANT NOTE - If you are late to reach the interview venue, do not panic. Travel
safely while you are on your way to venue. ONGC does not start its procedure right
away. You have at least 45 minutes before document verification process starts. I have
seen a few aspirants sweating profusely and rushing into the presentation hall while they
have 45 minutes easily before process starts. The officials are nice and friendly. They
understand and do not punish/embarrass any aspirant.

Immediately after document verification, I was informed that interview will be held
shortly. Honestly, I was not expecting it to be this quick. It came to my knowledge that
the panel was organizing short interviews which concentrated more on overall
personality of candidate rather than a solid subject preparation. After inquiring from
people who already were done with their interview, I came to a conclusion that the
interview is going to be "stress-interview" type.

Finally, I entered the room. The panel had 4 people - three gentlemen (G) and one lady
(L). The panel had their laptop opened in which they were viewing my resume. Making a
good CV was very critical for interviews in 2019.

L - So, tell us about yourself. Tell us only those things which are not in your resume here.
G1 - Okay so we can see that you have a minor in finance. Tell me what do you mean by
CAGR?

G1 - What do you mean by NPV and how do we use it as measure of profitability?

G2 - Do you know about LPG? What is its composition?

Me - *answers slightly wrongly*

G2 - Answer ONLY if you are sure of your answer. Do not make guesses here.

G3 - Do you know the weight of a domestic cylinder?

G1 - What is Gross and Net weight of Cylinder?

G1 - What is composition of CNG?

G2 - What do you know about problems in a distillation column? Do you know about
flooding?

G2 - What is weeping?

G2 - When does flooding and weeping occur?

G3 - Can you elaborate on your strengths and weaknesses you have mentioned in your
resume here?

G1 - Do you know about operating problems of a pump? Do not elaborate. Just tell us
the names.

*after this panel waits and looks at my resume for 5-7 seconds.*

L - Okay Mr. Tripathi. Thank you.

I was astonished as my interview lasted only for about 5-7 minutes. I prepared very
thoroughly for the interview but a very small fraction of it was asked. I expected to not
be selected at all.

Verdict - Interview marks = 12/15. Waiting list number - 2.

ONGC - CH 2019 || AIR 43 Nitish Sharma

Date of Interview - 28th June 2019
Company - Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC)

Profile - AEE (Production) through GATE

Location - Delhi

Interviewee - Nitish Sharma (GATE 2019 AIR 43)

GATE Score: 810

My experience with ONGC interview was very unexpected yet wonderful. I reached Scope
Minar in time and was directed to ONGC office in the building. On reaching the office,
we were first asked to show our call letters and sign against our names by CISF
personnel. After this, we were directed to the waiting hall. Waiting hall is a round table
conference room where presentation, before commencement of procedure, is held. We
were shown a very detailed presentation about ONGC and CTC breakdown. After this, we
were instructed to have our breakfast while the document verification of candidates
takes place as per the roll call.

As soon as I came out of document verification room, I was informed of my interview to

start in next 15 minutes. I took a seat outside the room and waited patiently for the
preceding candidate to come out. Inside the room, there were three Gentlemen (G) and
one Lady (L).

L - Hello Mr. Nitish. Take a seat.

Me - Thank you ma'am. Good Morning.

L - We have gone through your resume. Introduce yourself to us in a few lines.

G1 - You have a job experience it seems. Which company did you work in previously?

G1 - What did the company do? What were its chief products?

I answered in a very convincing manner.

I did my summer training from DCM SHRIRAM, Kota which manufactures fertilizers. Next
few questions were from my summer training.

G2 - Where did you complete your summer training from?

G2 - Do you know the major processes involved in an Ammonia plant?

G2 - How do we separate sulfur in pre-processing?

G3 - Tell us about primary reformer and its functions.

G3 - How did air supply take place in cooling towers of your plant?
G1 - Was it forced or natural circulation draft?

G2 - Do you know the process of Methanation?

G3 - Did you see today's oil price?

G3 - How many liters are there in one barrel?

G2 - How do you think is the price of oil decided?

After this the panel was silent for a while. Ma'am looked at my resume.

L - What do your parents do, Nitesh?

This was my last question. After this, the panel nodded in satisfaction and I was allowed
to take leave. My interview lasted for around 15 minutes and it was a memorable
experience.

Verdict - Interview marks 12/15. Waiting list number - 1.

IOCL - CH 2019 || AIR 32 Priyanshu Jaiswal

Date of Interview - 8th July 2019

Company - Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL)

Profile - Officer/Engineer through GATE

Location - Delhi

Interviewee - Priyanshu Jaiswal (GATE 2019 AIR 32)

GATE Score: 824

My IOCL interview date was 8th of July 2019, which happened to clash with my GAIL
interview dates. However, after contacting the supportive staff of the organizations, I was
able to reschedule them very conveniently. My IOCL interview experience was very
pleasant and memorable. I reported to Indian Institute of Petroleum Management early
in the morning as per my call letter. After the CISF verification at the entry, I was guided
to the presentation room where the presentation was held.
After the presentation was finished, we were sent to conference room in the complex.
We were supposed to get our documents verified in the room. IOCL staff was kind
enough to extend print out facility in the same complex for the ease of aspirants. Once
my document verification was complete, a group of 8 people including me was sent to
GD/GT room. As we entered the room, we were offered our positions around the round
table. Once being seated, instructions for GD and GT were delivered to us. Our topics for
GD was given and after its completion, topic for GT was provided.

GD Topic - Is neglecting others' mistakes our strength or weakness?

GT Topic - How can we improve the procedure of recruiting new candidates?

This marked end of 75% of the procedure. Now I had to wait for the most important
event of the day - Personal Interview. I was the second last candidate of the day to be
interviewed. In spite of taking interviews since morning, the panel was very supportive
and patient while listening to my answers.

The panel had 3 members - one lady and two gentlemen.

Me - Good morning Sirs, Good morning Ma'am.

P - Hello Mr. Priyanshu. Good morning. Please take the seat.

P - Tell us about yourself first.

P - Where did you do your summer training from? What was the duration?

P - Can you draw the flow sheet of the entire operation?

P - Tell us about the input, output streams and specifications of columns you have
mentioned in the flow sheet.

P - What do you know about distillation column?

(I was asked to draw on paper)

P - Where is the reboiler located in this?

P - What is the function of a reboiler?

P - What are the types of reboiler that you know of?

P - What are the different types of efficiencies which you know for a distillation column?

P - What is the composition of LPG?

P - How is this composition different from PNG?

P - Do you know about Newton's law of viscosity?

After this panel took a break of 2 -3 seconds. I realized that it was end of my technical
round.

P - In IOCL marketing, do you know who are dealers and who are distributors?

P - Have you ever seen an IOC bottling plant?

P - Do you know the weight of a cylinder?

With the the panel seemed satisfied with my answers. I performed my best during the
interview. I left the room with a Thank you.

Verdict - Selected for the post of Executive Officer/Engineer.

BARC - CH 2019 || AIR 84 Mayur Singh Rajput

Date of Interview - 16th May 2019

Company -Bhabha Atomic Research Center (B.A.R.C.)

Profile -Scientist - Chemical Engineering (through GATE)

Location - Mumbai

Interviewee - Mayur Singh Rajput (GATE 2019 AIR 84)

GATE Score: 756

I chose my BARC interview to be held on 16th of May 2019. I reported at the venue at
8.00 AM. After reporting, I was directed to document verification hall where I waited for
1.5 hour before being sent to waiting hall for interview. My turn came after spending 1.5
hours in waiting hall. When I entered the room, panel consisted of 5 people.

Initial questions were to make me comfortable with the panel. After a few HR type
questions, they started my technical round.

P - How did you come to Mumbai? When did you arrive?

P - When did you graduate from college?

P - What did you do in last one year?

P - Why did you opt Chemical Engineering?

P - Which subjects do you like in chemical Engineering?

My preferences were CRE, HT, FM and MT.

P - What all have you studied in CRE?

P - Can you design a Batch reactor.

P - What are the applications of Batch Reactor?

P - How do we carry out Exothermic reaction?

P - For a reversible reaction A <--> B, how will you calculate Equilibrium constant and
Conversion?

P - How would you know whether your reaction has reached equilibrium or not?

P - Can you draw the temperature profile of an exothermic reaction carried out in a PFR?

P - I want to buy a pump, what all factors I have to consider before that?

P - What is NPSH?

P - How do we find NPSH?

P - There are two tanks one above the other, I want to pump water from bottom to top,
where should I put the pump?

P - How do we calculate Suction head?

P - What would be the maximum suction head?

P - How do we calculate the flowrate?

P - What is orifice meter?

P - How does it differ from Venturimeter?

With this my BARC interview was concluded. It lasted for about 40 minutes during which
I answered all of their questions in great detail.

Verdict - Not Selected

--------------------------------

The candidate is currently working as A.E.E. (P) with ONGC

IOCL - CH 2019 || AIR 5 Atindranath Ghosh
Date of Interview - 9th July 2019

Company - Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL)

Profile - Officer/Engineer through GATE

Location - Delhi

Interviewee - Atindranath Ghosh (GATE 2019 - AIR 5)

GATE score - 914

My IOCL recruitment procedure was scheduled in IIPM Gurgaon on 9th July. We were
invited to the venue at 8.30 AM. Entry began at 8.45 AM. We were first directed to
waiting room where a short presentation of IOCL took place. We were informed that
Chennai Petroleum Corportion Limited (CPCL) was also taking part in recruitment
procedure. We were informed that to opt for recruitment in CPCL, we had to fill a form,
or notify otherwise. After the presentation, we were directed to the document
verification hall. After a while, we were called one by one to report for GD/GT followed
by interview.

GD - Would Make in India initiative of Government lead to decrease in FDI?

GT - What steps could IOCL take to reduce air pollution in areas surrounding its
refineries?

After my GD/GT, I was redirected to wait in document verification room till my interview
starts. My interview call came after 40 minutes. Once I entered the interview room, I was
confronted with 3 panelists. My interview was very straightforward and little bit on the
difficult side.

P - Tell us about yourself in a little brief, Mr. Atindra.

P - Where did you do your internship in?

P - We see that you have a minor in finance. Why did you choose to take GATE?

P - What are your favorite subjects?

P - What do you know about boundary layer?

P - What is no slip condition?

P - Can you tell us about the second law of thermodynamics?

P - Do you know what is second law of motion, as given by Newton?

P - How do you define temperature of a body?

After this, the panel took a little pause and the questions were directd to the HR in panel.

P - So Mr. Atindra, you have scored AIR 5. You will be selected for all PSUs. Why would
you choose IOCL over others?

P - Did you apply for higher studies abroad after completing your bachelors?

P - Why did you not pursue your masters abroad?

P - What are your favorite sports?

After this, the panelists came back to technical questions.

P - What is Relative Humidity?

P - What is Saturation Humidity and how will it change if I increase the temperature of
this room?

P - Can you what may the relative humidity of this room be?

P - What do you understand with Degree of Freedom?

I answered all these questions convincingly. My interview lasted for around 32 minutes. It
was a very pleasant experience. I knew the answers of all the technical questions and I
tried answering the HR questions to the best of my capailities.

Verdict - Selected for the position of Officer/Engineer

BARC - CH 2019 || AIR 5 Atindranath Ghosh

Date of Interview - 29th May 2019

Company -Bhabha Atomic Research Center (B.A.R.C.)

Profile -Scientist - Chemical Engineering (through GATE)

Location - Mumbai

Interviewee - Atindranath Ghosh (GATE 2019 AIR 5)

GATE Score: 914

I reached Mumbai on 23rd, as I was having another interview on 24th May. I was staying
in my friend’s home for the remaining days.

I left for Anushakti nagar at around 7:00 AM in the morning and reached the campus at
8:00. I was asked to sit at the reception and then we went to upstairs for document
verification. I was given the token slip saying I would be number 4 to be interviewed. I
went for biometric test and given snacks.

I was called for the interview at 11:15 AM.

I greeted them Good Morning. There were around 7 members sitting around the round
table. Chairperson asked me to take a seat and then the interview started.

P1: When did you reach Mumbai?

Me: On 23rd Sir

P1: Why so early, did you have any other interview?

Me: Yes, I had NPCIL interview on 24th.

P1: How was it?

Me: The interview went good, but unfortunately I didn’t get the medical slip.

P1: Do you know about heat exchanger equipment??

Me: Yes Sir, there are many. Evaporators, Heat exchangers, boilers, etc.

P2: How do you classify them?

Me: Sir, it depends on the requirement and the fluids we are dealing with. Like, we use
radiators for car. (I made a big mistake here. I shouldn’t have used this term)

P2: Draw a Radiator.

Me: Tried to make one compact structure.

P3: Here is a figure where you can see two different environments separated by two thick
walls of different conductivity. Left side is the condensing steam at 100 degree and the
right side is ambient air at 30 degree. Draw the temperature profile.

Me: I tried to draw one.

P3: Are you sure? Don’t you think it would be like that?
He grilled me for around 15 minutes on that profile and asked around 4-5 cross
questions.

P4: Now draw a 1-1 shell and tube heat exchanger.

Me: Drew one, showed various parts of the heat exchanger.

P4. What are these baffles? Why do we use?

Me: Answered.

P4: why it is not complete?

Me: I said there is a baffle cut so that shell side liquid can flow.

P4: She asked how much?

Me: In the figure I drew, it’s 25%.

P5: Draw a 1-2 shell and tube Heat Exchanger.

Me: I drew and then they started grilling me on that.

It went around another 5-6 minutes on that.

P6: Is the separation possible at alpha=1 (relative volatility)?

Me: I said no.

P6: Can you tell me about the variation with temperature and pressure.

Me: I answered.

P2: Suppose A+B --> C, it’s an endothermic reaction. Tell me how will you carry it?

Me: I will provide some source of heat.

P2: How much?

Me: Enthalpy of the reaction

P3: Wahi toh kitna?

Me: Enough energy to activate the reactants so that they can react.

P4: Tell me an example of endothermic and exothermic reaction.

Me: Couldn’t remember at this point of time.

P3: Okay, Draw a horizontal rotameter.

Me: I drew the rotameter but I told them I haven't seen it before.

P2: What are the forces acting on it?

Me: Gravitational, drag and buoyancy

P3: Can you draw a vertical one?

Me: Yes,I can.

P3: What's the principle behind it?

Me: I said the variable area.

They grilled me further on that.

Panel: Thank you Atindra for your time.

Me: I thanked them too.

The chairperson signed the slip and said me to go for TA.

Interview duration: 45-47 minutes.

I got confused in some questions and I think I should have prepared more to answer the
cross questions they asked. I think I might not get selected for BARC this but no worries I
have enough interviews to sail on.

Important tip: While answering questions, don’t use any terminology without knowing
about it completely. It can backfire on you.

All the best.

Verdict - Not selected

IOCL - CH 2019 || AIR 298 Atul Kumar Singh

Date of Interview - June 2019

Company - Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL)

Profile - Officer/Engineer through GATE

Location - Mumbai

Interviewee - Atul Kumar Singh (GATE 2019 AIR 298)

GATE Score: Not provided

Other relevant information - The interviewee has graduated as Chemical Engineer from
NIT Surat and finished his masters from IIT Guwahati.

My interview was scheduled in Bandra Office of IOCL. On entering, we were guided to

the waiting room and were informed that Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited was
involved with IOCL for recruitment. We were informed that if we wish to be considered
for CPCL recruitment, we need to fill the form given to us. And if we do not wish to be
considered, then we need to mention that on the same form. We were then instructed to
arrange our documents in the given order. After my document verification, I had my
GD/GT round.

GD - Should Government permit lateral entry in Administrative Positions.

GT - What would your approach be, as a group, to save people from a flood affected
area and reduce the damage caused to the everyday life of residents.

After this my interview was scheduled. The panel consisted of 8 people - 6 of them
seemed to be from technical background and 2 from HR department.

(P = Panel)

P - So Mr. Atu, introduce yourself to us!

P - What subjects did you study in your Masters?

P - Do you know about Shale Gas? What is Shale Gas?

P - What is IOCL doing in Shale gas domain?

P - Do you know about Hydraulic Fracturing?

(I gave wrong answer)

P - What is the other name of Hydraulic Fracturing?

P - What is Darcey's Law?

(I gave wrong answer)

The panel was silent for a while.

P - Mr. Atul, please go to the board for answering the next question.
P - Draw flowsheet of a petroleum refinery for us.

P - What is meant by a distillation column?

P - What sort of separation can we achieve in a Distillation Columns?

P - What is rectifying and stripping section?

P - Where is Asphalt taken out from - ADU or VDU?

P - What is composition of LPG?

P - How is LPG different from LNG?

P - Please come back to chair.

P - Do you know about Industry 4.0?

Me - No Sir, I do not have any idea about this term. Infact I have heard this term from
you the first time.

P - What is recent trend in industry in general?

Me - Artificial Intelligence

P - Do you think there is any link of Artificial Intelligence and Chemical Engineering?

P - How did you develop interest in Chemical Engineering?

P - What sports do you play?

P - How will you use your skills from these sports for IOCL?

P - Is there anything you want to ask to the panel?

Verdict - Selected for Position of Executive Officer/Engineer

GAIL - CH 2019 || AIR 112 Mohd. Faizaan

Date of Interview - 9th July 2019

Company - Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL)

Profile - Executive Trainee through GATE

Location - Delhi

Interviewee - Mohd. Faizaan (GATE 2019 AIR 112)

GATE Score: 730

My GAIL interview was one day after my IOCL interview and thus, I was mentally warmed
up for this interview. I prepared my summer training and strong subjects very well. I
reached the venue in Noida at 7.30 AM and was instructed to wait in their lobby. Around
9 AM, we were called in the auditorium where document verification was held. There was
no presentation or introduction given about the company. Document verification
officials were calling people one by one according to their name in list.

After around 8-9 people were done with their document verification, they were called in
GD room. The GD room was a big conference hall where pen and paper was given to us.
After a little introduction, we were given our topic. Once the GD was over, we were asked
to wait outside. To my surprise, the panel for GD and interview was same. This was new
to me as I have never seen this happen. After a while, my name was called from inside
and I was instructed to take a seat.

The panel consisted of 4 gentlemen and 1 lady. I knew one of the revered panelists as I
interacted with him during my summer training in GAIL, about two years back.

P - Tell us about yourself.

P - What are your strengths and weaknesses?

P - Where have you done your summer training from?

P - Do you know which is the first step in hot section of GAIL Pata plant?

P - What is meant by Gas Cracking?

P - Write reaction with mechanism of an example of Gas Cracking.

P - At what temperature does cracking reaction take place? What is the effect of
pressure?

P - Is there any pressure maintained in a furnace?

P - What are your subjects of interest?

Me - Mass Transfer and Process Engineering.

P - What is process engineering?

P - Have you worked on any simulation software? What is meant by the word
"Simulation" for a chemical engineer?

P - What is the difference between PID and PFD of a plant?

P - Define thermodynamic properties.

P - What are the mass transfer processes that take place inside a cracker?

P - What is absorption?

P - What is the difference between absorption and adsorption?

P - Which of them is dependent on temperature?

P - What is McCabe Thiele diagram? Explain it by using pen and paper in front of you.

P - In this diagram, what if the feed is entered at dew point?

P - What will happen if the feed is saturated? What if it is superheated?

P - How will you separate two components whose boiling point difference is negligible?

P - Why do you want to join GAIL?

P - What are your hobbies?

With this my interview got over. It lasted for 25 minutes. The panel was very friendly and
had very thorough knowledge of subjects. I could not answer 3 questions in the
interview. I was satisfied with my interview experience, though I feel I could have done
better.

Verdict - Selected for the post of Executive Trainee.

IOCL - CH 2019 || AIR 112 Mohd. Faizaan

Date of Interview - 8th July 2019

Company - Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL)

Profile - Officer/Engineer through GATE

Location - Delhi

Interviewee - Mohd. Faizaan (GATE 2019 AIR 112)

GATE Score: 730

The venue of my IOCL interview was Indian Oil Institute of Petroleum Management. I
reached the venue at 8.10 AM and was asked to wait till CISF permits entries. After CISF
personnel provided us with our ID cards, we were guided to presentation room where
we spent 45 minutes. After the presentation was over, we were sent to document
verification room. Document verification took place in a conference room. The officials
checked our documents very thoroughly paying close attention to every minor detail.
After my verification was over, I patiently waited till my call for GD/GT was announced.

GD/GT was held in a small room consisting of a round table with 8 chairs arranged
around it. We were made to take our seat according to our roll call. Instructions were
delivered by the panelists and were started as the bell rang.

GD topic - Will US sanctions on Iran affect India's growth?

GT topic - In what ways can we improve safety measures in Petroleum Industries?

GD/GT round was very refreshing round for me as my group was very well-versed with
the topics. After this, I had to wait for my Interview. As I entered the interview room, I
was greeted by two gentlemen (G) and one lady (L) in the panel.

Me - May I come in Sir? Good Morning Ma'am. Good Morning Sirs.

G - Good Morning.

L - Tell us a little about yourself first.

G - Since your GATE score already speaks highly of your technical knowledge, we would
like to carry this interview after knowing you better. Give us an introduction about
yourself which is different from everyone else. Do not use the usual words like
hardworking, diligent, honest etc.

L - What are you hobbies?

L - Tell us about your strength and weaknesses.

G - What is your family background? Do you have any younger sibling?

G - You must have heard a lot about IOCL previously. What are things that you find bad
about IOCL?

G - Where did you finish your summer training from?

(I did my summer training from GAIL Pata Plant.)

G - Give us a brief overview of the processes happening in the plant.

G - What are your areas of interest?

Me - Mass Transfer

P - Explain about Azeotropic distillation.

L - Why did you not choose M.Tech? Why do you want to join IOCL?

G - If you prefer PSU, then why IOCL? Why not GAIL or ONGC?

G - Okay Mr. Faizaan, do you have any question to ask to us?

Me - Sir, I have special interest in Process Engineering. I was curious, if selected, how to
explore the possibility of me working in the same?

G - There are several departments in our refinery. You will know about it slowly if you get
selected.

G - What if you do not get it? Will you still join IOCL?

L - Would you work in a place where you don't want to work but company requires you
to?

After answering those questions partially, they grant me permission to leave the room.
My interview was filled with unexpected questions. I went prepared for technical but was
able to answer HR questions in a more satisfactory manner. I could not answer a couple
of questions but the panel was kind enough to support me.

Verdict - Selected for the post of Officer/Engineer.

HTO Questions:
Do you drink tea ? What if I transfer this tea from this small cup to this big cup ? Will
it cool faster or slower.
You: You look at both the cups and point out that the one which has the larger
surface area in contact with air would cool faster.
Interviewer: So what if I replace this with water instead of milk ? What is the
parameter that is going to change? What is the equation relating the phenomenon ?
What is a more faster way to cool this from a common man's point of view ?
You: You write down the Newtons law of cooling and explain the parameters
controlling the convection process. The dependence on heat transfer coefficient and
surface area are also laid down. And in this particular question you would point out
the heat capacity difference between milk and water. Later you explain how heat
transfer coefficient can be altered by stirring with a spoon or increasing the speed of
fan, similarly you also explain how the surface area can be changed by transferring
the content to the plate kept at the base of the cup.
Interviewer: These are all the things that you do at home. Stirring with spoon and
juggling the liquid between the cups. If I want to achieve this at an industrial scale,
what should I do?
You: You come up with the concept of heat exchangers.( rather you are pushed to
the concept of heat exchangers)
Interviewer: What are the other heat exchange devices used in an industry.? How
are they different from heat exchanger.How do you increase the heat transfer rate in
a given heat exchanger ?
You: You list out the various heat transfer equipments and specify the uniqueness of
heat exchangers. You also list out the various methods of increasing the heat transfer
rate in a heat exchanger such as increasing the surface area, using triangular pitch
instead of square pitch, increase turbulence through baffles etc.
Interviewer: Increasing the surface area ? You mean by increasing the number of
tubes or is there any other method(s) to do so ?
You: Yes, You introduce the concept of fins and it's uses.
Interviewer: How does the temperature profile vary in a 1:1 heat exchanger ? Draw
the temperature profiles of the fins situated at either sides of the heat exchanger ?
What would be the difference in temperature profiles of the fins located at the cold
and hot end ?
You: You plot the temperature profile inside the heat exchanger in a counter current
as well as co-current flow system. Also, two different temperature profiles of the
rectangular fins with varying degree of curves depicting different temperature at the
base of the fin is drawn.

1
Interviewer: Why is the temperature profile parabolic ? Why couldn't it be linear ? If
I replace ambient air with oil around the fin, how would the temperature profile look
like ?
You: You sense that the interviewer wants to go into boundary layer theory,
evidently you explain the reason based on the boundary layer theory. Following that,
you draw a more straighter cure of the oil dipped fin temperature profile explaining
the reason.
2. The physical significance of thermal diffusivity, thermal conductivity and specific
heat capacity
3. If you are holding rods of different thermal conductivity and specific heat
capacities, and one end of the rod is exposed to a high temperature which rod will
transmit heat faster?
Two tapered cylinders whose curved surface is insulated are connected at the smaller
radius end and one end of the set-up is maintained at a higher temperature than the
other.

10. Draw one-dimensional temperature profile for the set up based on Fourier law of
heat conduction
11. At what point heat flux will be maximum and what about heat transfer rate
Asked about the mode of heat transfer and about how each one is occurring, and
factors affecting radiative heat transfer
12. What is view-factor? How it's calculated? Calculate all view factors of an
arrangement of a small sphere inside a spherical enclosure and what if there is no
enclosure
13. Asked to touch some metallic object and a wooden paperweight on the table
and asked what do I feel? Although those two objects were exposed to the same
temperature and pressure condition also attained steady-state being in the same
condition for many hours why there is a sensation of difference in temperature on
both on touching?
14. If you are in a place with subzero temperatures if you touch cold metal surfaces
your hand will stick to the surface and sometimes peel off your skin, same happens in
the refrigerator evaporator surface, the reason behind that.

2
15. You are provided with an 8mm glass block and two similar glass block of 4mm
thickness. All are made of the same material. The two 4mm glass blocks are joined
together to form a single block. Which block will have a higher effective thermal
conductivity?
Chairman :Types of Heat transfer ,explain briefly how it transfer heat,is radiation
transfer heat in vacuum or not .
PM: Law's of Heat transfer, why negative sign is there in Fourier's law ,what's thermal
conductivity ,which materials has highest thermal conductivity I told that generally
metals has high thermal conductivity but diamond has highest then he asked
explained why diamond has highest thermal conductivity, which metal has high
thermal conductivity.
PM: Refer to fig 1 draw profiles of flux Vs temperature and temperature Vs distance
from centre, draw slopes at interface of ‘liquid and solid' and ‘solid and air' and will
be same or not explain it. They are trying to confuse me.
PM: derived the equation of hollow cylinder.

C - What are the different modes of the heat transfer and differentiate between
them?
Me - Answered with confidence about all three modes and cited certain differences.
C - Can you write governing equation of all three modes?
Me - I started from Fourier’s law then Newton’s law of cooling and Stefan
Boltzmann’s law and explained them well.
C - Why is there a negative sign in governing equation of conduction?
Me - Sir, because temperature gradient is negative in the direction of heat
conduction, to make heat flux positive we use negative sign.

3
F - Give us at least one example of each mode where only one type of heat transfer is
taking place?
Me - I was a bit shocked on this question since in many cases more than one type of
heat transfer takes place so I thought for a moment and answered them correctly.
M - How will you increase the radiation heat transfer?
Me - I mentioned about increasing view factor or temperature or emissivity.
C - What is view factor, Explain with diagram?
Me - I explained them about the concept of view factor and drawn different cases of
view factor with proper reasoning.
C - How will you increase emissivity?
Me - Then the chairman gave me a problem of uniform heat generation inside a
cylinder of a given dimensions with bottom and curved surfaces of it are insulated
and top surface open to the atmosphere and asked me that
What will happen after infinite time?
Derive the expression of temperature and draw the final temperature profile?
What will happen if we use a fan just above the top surface? How will be the
temperature profile, explain practically and analytically?
What will happen if we create vaccum instead of atmosphere?
Though I took my time, I answered each part of the question correctly. They were
giving some indirect hint wherever I got stucked.
F - How many types of flow of fluid inside heat exchanger are there?
Me - I told them all three types of flow i. e. Crossflow, countercurrent flow and co-
current flow.
F - In a shell and tube type of heat exchanger, if steam is condensing on shell side
(Losing only latent heat) and water is getting heated on tube side, In which case
LMTD will be more? Whether in co-current flow or counter current flow also draw
temp. profile?
Me - Comfortably drawn the temp. profile and answered that LMTD will be same for
the both types of flow in this case.
Draw temperature profile for flow in pipe keeping heat flux at wall constant.
Profile linear or parabolic.
What will happen to profile if flowarate double will change or not?
What is h and on what factor h depend ?
How will you calculate heat flux in case of flow in pipe?
Draw the graph of heat flux variation for flow in pipe.
What is ditus bolter? Write ditus bolter.What is prandtl number,Reynolds
Number,Nusselt number?
Dependency of heat transfer coefficient on reynolds number.
Drew two slabs in parallel with different conductivity draw temperature profile in
slabs ,whether the temperature profile feasible or not?
Then they drew a frustom conical expander with its end at different temperature with
sides insulated draw the temperature profile variation with length,heat flux variation
with length,heat energy variation with length,variation is linear or quadratic.

4
M1: there is a pipe with uniform heat flux through out its length, water is passing
through it, inlet temperature is 25C outlet temperature is 160C, pressure is
1atm..draw the temperature profile of water?
Me:(drew a straight line with positive slope from inlet to outlet)
M1:are you sure?
Me: ( thinking for few seconds) ok sir there's a mistake.
M1:use the eraser.
Me:(drawing again, drew a curve-positive slope-decreasing slips) sir as the water
passes is temperature will rise so heat flux will decrease thus rate of heat transfer will
decrease.....
M1:heat flux is constant.
Me: ok, that slipped my mind, then slope will also be constant i.e. We will get a
straight line... (thinking for few seconds..)
M1:see, water is entering,what do you think is leaving ?
Me:ok, it will become stream till it reaches outlet.
M1:draw the curve .
Me:(drew straight line, positive slope then at 100C 0 slope till some distance then
again positive slope till 160C)
M1:which portion will have maximum length?
Me: q.x=mc(dT) and q.x= m(LH). If mass flow rate is m, heat flux per unit length is q
an x is unknown for each of the tgree portions. We can find x factor r each portion.
M1: use the values and find out which lenghth is largest.
Me: c of water in s 4.18kj/kgK latent heat of evaporation is 2300 Kj/kgK and Cp of
steam( trying to recall for few seconds) sir, I dont remember.
F1: What is natural convection and the mechanism behind it?

F1: Which parameter governs transition from laminar to transition flow in natural
convection?

F1: What is this Rayleigh No. and its transition value generally?

F1: What is this Grashoff No. and its formula?

F1: Explain each term(of above formula).

F1: What is this coefficient of volume expansivity and its formula?

I fumbled a bit here but she told me to understand its definition carefully and then
derive it. Luckily, it stuck in my mind.

5
F1: Ok, can you draw boiling curve for water and explain salient points?

18. Hollow composite cylinder where drawn, inner one was steel, middle one wood
and outer one copper, inside the cylinder temperature 140 and outside it is 40, Draw
temperature profile in the radial direction
19. Different pipe they have drawn of different diameter range from 100 mm to 1
mm. All were perfect horizontal. Water is there in all initially, and the valve is closed
from both sides, once the valve is open from one side, what will the flow condition in
all different pipe.

20. 3 slabs having different conductivities but same thickness are separated by 2 metal
plates of 300 C and fluid of 30 C both sides ...draw the temperature profile at steady
state ...if thermal conductivities are varied then whats the variation of temp profile

Now let the same problem be a cylindrical rod about a axis in left ...what will be the
temperature profile?

Q. 10 draw temp profile of slab one side temp 100°c, other side 50°c and surrounding air
temp 30°c….

Q 11 explain above profile?

Q. 12 how heat transfer take place?

6
CRE –Questions
1. What are the similarities between the last 3 subjects?
2. What is driving force and resistance and what is driving force in each?
3. The common term in all three transfer operations?
Then they started questions from CRE. One of them passed a paper having 4 CSTRs
in 6 different parallel and series combination and for a given second-order reaction

Arrange the combinations in the descending order of overall conversion.

5. For an industrial application which combination will be optimum considering
conversion, cost and instrumentation
Two parallel reactions were given have unknown orders and rate constant
6. How to find the rate constants and orders of the parallel reactions if you are
provided with a batch reactor having concentration monitor are connected?
Another set of parallel reactions are provided with unknown rate constants and
orders but one of the reaction is marked as the desirable reaction
7. How to maximize the production of desirable product and increase the rate of
production?

7
PM: Types of reactor, how do you select reactor, difference between reactors.
M - How many types of reactors do you know? What are the assumptions applied?
Me - I told them about Batch, MFR and PFR and their assumptions and also
explained about PBR for homogeneous reaction system.
M - For the same inlet conditions, Which reactor will give more conversion, given the
volume of both reactors are same?
Me - For the positive order reaction, PFR will give more conversion and MFR will give
less conversion and for the other case vice-versa.
M - What is the reason behind it?
Me - Sir because for negative order, rate will be inversely proportional to the
concentration, since MFR converts instantaneously the reactant and concentration
drops suddenly whereas in the case of PFR, concentrations drops gradually. So rate
will be more in the case of MFR as compared to PFR for negative order of reaction.
That’s why conversion is more in MFR for this case.
M - If we devide a PFR into several parts of equal sized PFRs in series, In which case
the conversion will more? Tell the same thing about MFR?
Me - For PFR conversion will remain same after dividing into equal sized PFRs
whereas for MFR, if we devide the MFR into several equal volume reactors, final
conversion will be more because it will tend towards PFR behavior.
M - Suppose three equal volume MFR are in series and final conversion is 90%. Tell
me about approximate conversion after 1st and 2nd reactor?
Me - Sir, in first reactor conversion will be more than 30%, in 2nd reactor conversion
difference between outlet and inlet will be less then the first one and in the 3rd
reactor, conversion difference between outlet and inlet will be even lesser than 2nd
reactor beacuse concentration will drop and rate of reaction will get slow down.
They drew 3 combination of mfr and pfr in series of same volume gave second order
kinetics and explain physically in which conversion will be more and why?
What will happen at 0 order 1st order explain physically no maths ?
Single pfr mfr of same volume conversion difference .
Write performance equation of all reactor draw their graphs explain graph.
What is ideal pfr mfr batch reactor?
How concentration varies in ideal mfr along the length.
What are nonidealities in mfr pfr?Is laminar flow a nonideality in pfr?
How to predict nonideality in pfr?
What is 1 parameter model?
What is axial dispersion?
What is dispersion coefficeint?What is its value for ideal pfr mfr?
What will happen if laminar flow in pfr?
Why we need flat velocity profile in pfr?

8
 1. What is E-curve? What is F-curve? How they are related?
2. Draw E-curve for PFR!
3. Explain this curve.(Why there is a line? ).
4. What do you know about Thiele modulus?
5. What is ratio controller?
6. What is cascade controller?Examples.
7. Whether recycling is beneficial for MFR and Why (if yes or no)?and tell us
same for PFR?
8. Which reactor is suitable for parallel reaction?(Different reactions were
given).
9. Explain PID controller working.
10. How many laws are in thermodynamics and which one is the most
important one and why?
11. Derive Design Equation for PFR.
12. Do the same for N MFR in series.
13. what you studied in cre?
14. how you design batch reactor?
15. if I want to do exothermic reaction in batch reactor.. What can i do?
16. how can you find equilibrium conversion and equilibrium constant in reversible
reaction A gives to B?
17. how can you make any product?

9
FM-Questions
16. What are the guidelines for designing a pipeline?
If you have to transport water at a rate of 10,000m3/hr from a lake in Kollam(my
college location) which is at 1000m above MSL to Mumbai which is located at MSL.
17. How will you transport water; open channel or pipeline; pump or gravity flow; line
sizing; if the pump is used single pump or intermediate pumping station?
Two tanks located at a height difference of ‘H1’m. A centrifugal pump is used to
pump water from the lower elevation tank to the higher elevation one. But due to
some space constrain piping has to go through a height of ‘H2’m and then
discharges to the top tank. Given H2>H1

18. What is system characteristics and pump characteristics? Draw characteristic

curves of radial and axial flow pumps?
19. Draw system characteristics of both situations. Reason for deviation.
20. Will pumping power change with the change in piping?
21. Different arrangements of open tanks at different elevation and closed vessels
having different pressures are connected and to predict the flow direction and how
to reverse the flow without additional piping or pieces of equipment.

10
PM: Refer to figure 4 calculate pressure at points 1,2 and 3. Will pressure remain
same in all the three points or not. What will happen if we closed the pipe. I was
explaining answer with the help of Bernoulli equation then he Asked me What’s
Bernoulli equation ?what do you think in one pipe inlet is along the fluid direction
and another pipe inlet is opposite of fluid direction will it affect pressure.

M - What is friction factor? How do we get the value of friction factor?

Me - Explained them about friction factor and Moody’s chart.
M - Draw Delta P vs Flow rate curve for a pipe?
Me - Drawn the curve indicating different regimes and showing dependency of Delta
P on Flow rate.
M - Draw Friction factor vs length in a long pipe if fluid enters from one end and
fluid flow develops inside the pipe?
Me - (I was knowing the relation of friction factor for fully developed flow but not
knowing about it for developing flow) I tried to explain them what I think it should
be, I told them that friction factor would be more in developing region and would be
constant for developed flow.
What is npsh,caviation?
What will vapor bubble do in pump ,their effect?
What is the difference if liquid and gas is used in pump?
Why volute is used,what is the disadvantage of high kinetic energy at outlet why we
convert it?
Why we convert kinetic energy into pressure energy in volute only when the fluid
with high kinetic energy will go up in pipe there will no problem (ignore losses) then
automatically it will convert into pressure energy?
Explain working of centrifugal pump.
How impeller increase pressure energy?
Variation of density on head explain for oil water mercury ,draw there difference
performance curve.
What are Fan laws?
Ganga mein paani kaise behta hain.

11
M3: (draws a tank with one hole at bottom face, one at outlet of vertical pipe
attached at bottom face and last also at bottom but on vertical face) what are
velocities at each of these outlets?
Me:(using bernoulli's equation derived velocities)
M1:now buckets under each stream at same level, which one will fill first?
Me:first one.
M1:why?
Me:highest velocity
M2:which one will fill second?
Me:other 2 will fill simultaneously.... Ok wait... Stream from third hole is having a
projectile type stream
I started using equations of projectile motion.. Filled almost a page...
M1:Is this necessary?
M3:what are you trying to do?
Me:sir, I am trying to find the velocity of stream just before it gets into bucket as that
would give us volume flow rate and as we know volume of bucket we can find time
taken to fill it.
M1:ok continue.
Me: further using projectile motion equations in x and y axis.
M4:(after 4-5 seconds) sometimes analysis is not necessary. Use your engineering
sense, which one do you think will fill faster.
M2:yes use method of feeling.
Me: (after few seconds, trying to feel) I think second hole will fill first.
M1: sure?
Me: (thinking)
M1:do you think in third hole water has to travel larger distance?
Me:yes sir, I get it.
M1:Is this the only reason for 2nd stream filling bucket before 3rd one?
Me:yes sir.They were not looking satisfied but again chairman interrupted them and
told me answer few questions.
P - Can you draw the characteristic curve of centrifugal pump?
Me - (I drew the Graph between flow rate (Q) and Head (H))

P - Can you tell me the way to increase the head without changing the inlet flow
rate?

12
Me - Yes, we can change it by changing the impeller speed.
P - Tell me about the affinity laws.
P - Draw a water filled tank and attach a nozzle at the bottom. What will be the
velocity of the fluid coming out? Derive the expression.
P - Okay. What if you put up another empty tank to the outlet of nozzle? When will it
come to equilibrium?
P - What will happen if you place a pump?

P - What parameter will you consider for designing for a pipe?

P - How will you boil water at 60 degree Celsius?
C-Have you heard the name of Stainless Steel? What is composition and property of
it?(This is when I thought that they are taking me seriously, which increased my
confidence.)
Q. 5 how can we say if any reaction possible or not?

Q. 6 how can you find gibbs free energy?

Q 7 how you make delta G negative?

Q. 8 they give me one diagram in which two slab connected and one side steam and
second side air, also both slab have different conductivity. They ask to draw temp
profile?

Q. 9 types of valve and explain about that where we use that valve?

Q. 10 what is humidity and it's unit?

Q.11 At saturation wet bulb and dry bulb temp relation and explain why they are equal ?

Q. 12 one tank is filled with air which have some humidity how can you remove that
humidity?

Q. 13 Tell something about pump?

Q. 14 safety features in reciprocating and centrifugal pump?

Q. 15 how can you measure flow rate in pipe?

Q 16 explain method how to find flow rate using different flow meter?

Q 17 explain Burnoulie principal?

Q 18 they give me one pipe shape diagram in which area Intiaally increasing than
decreasing and in this they connect Piezometer at 6–7 point and ask for draw head
diagram in this?

13
4. Types of pump
5. Working of reciprocating pump & centrifugal pump
6. Construction and working of centrifugal pump
7. Why we filled initially water in the centrifugal pump, what we call that, what will
happen if we don't do that
8. Working of screw pump and its applications
9. Which pump is used in the crude oil industry
10. 15 m building is there, we need to pump the water from ground floor to top,
where will you keep your pump
11. Why we don't keep the pump directly at the top
12. Why we don't keep the pump at bottom itself, for maintenance purpose it will be
easy
13. While dealing with the pump why we mostly talk about energy in term of the
head only
14. Flow is taking place in a pipe, at any point what is total energy in term of joule
15. working of underground submersible pump, how it's suction of water is done up
to such height
16. Have heard about aerofoil shape & draw that, explain it why it's required, where
it's use
17. How the lift generated in an aeroplane

18. Design a piping system for city where inlet of pipe is at reservoir end and exit is
at tank. Consider some amount of water required by residents/ day and some head
of reservoir and tank is at ground level and flow is laminar.

19. 3 different tanks were there one with area decreasing from top to bottom and
one with increasing and last being of constant area

A tap is used to fill it ....draw the variation of water height with time.

Now we empty it by drilling a orifice at bottom. Now draw the height vs time graph.

Q. 13 we want pump in plant how you check which pump you use? explain NPSH and
how you find that?

Q. 15 2 tanks one is below to the other tank at which Possition we locate pump to
transfer fluid from below tank to above tank?

Q. 16 how can you avoid Cavitation in this? Maximum possible suction head?

Q. 19 difference between orificemeter and venturimeter? explain principal of that and

how can you find flow rate from pressure difference?

Q 19 if I want to make daal what can I do?

Q 20 where we make daal easily at ground level or at mountain?

14
Q 21 daal pressure se banti he ya temp se?

Me - Yes sir, It is an alloy of carbon having Chromium and Nickel etc. as alloying
material. They are corrosion resistant and having high tensile strength.
C - Due to which component these properties are?
Me - Sir, I do not know about it (Because I literally had no idea about it)
C - What is pH value?
Me - Answered.
C - What is Le chatlier’s principle?
Me - Answered with examples.
C - What is Roult’s law?
Me - Answered
C - What is Dalton’s law?
Me - Answered
F - What does the 1 Ton of AC mean?

15
MTO-Questions
22. The physical significance of the diffusivity coefficient
An adsorption bed operating at 30 deg C is used to remove component B from a gas
mixture of A and B. a concentration analyser is connected at the outlet of the
adsorption bed.

23. Plot concentration of A and B vs time at 30 deg C

24. Reason for the shape of the curve and how will the change in temperature affect
the shape of the curve? At 60 deg C changes in the plot.
25. What temperatures are favourable for different types of adsorption(physical and
chemical adsorption)?
26. How will you design an absorption column?
An absorption tower used to absorb H2S from a mixture of H2S and CO. Inlet gas
composition is 3% H2S and 97% CO. Liquid used is free from H2S. 90% of H2S has to
be absorbed into the liquid.

7. Design methodology for the above situation. Draw a graph and explain.
28. If the liquid flow rate is 1.1 times the Lmin, what will be the new operating point?
how will it affect recovery?
PM:Refer to figure 2 calculate rate of evaporation and assume what ever you want,
only given is diameter of container and diameter of vent, I started with flux concept
then she asked me what is driving force in this case ,what are the driving force in
mass transfer after explaining all this I compared this system with Stefan tube
diffusivity method then chairman asked me so you have knowledge about stefen
16
tube I explained basic fundamentals of this method then again asked me how liquid
level varies with time in stefen tube is it linear or non linear? I told him non linear
variation as time(t) propostional to difference in level square then he asked prove it.

PM: packed column and tray column difference and when it is used.
PM: if All six parameter(feed,distillate and bottom flow rate and composition) of
distillation column are given ,is it possible or not? What are the minimum parameter
required ? Degree of freedom concept 6 parameters and 2 equations.
PM: About macCabe -thiele method, what is essential for this method (they want to
hear equilibrium data), why 45 degree line is there in this method. Refer to figure 3
how you will calculate minimum no of trays.
PM:How to design column they just wants initial steps(started from calculation of
number of theoritical plate) once you are explaining they will stop you.
The chairman drawn a curve between Y - X (Equilibrium curve) for minimum boiling
azeotrope.
C - I have seen it somewhere and I could not understand what is it? Can you help me
to know about this curve?
Me - I told them that this is an equilibrium curve for a minimum boiling azeotrope.
C - What is an equilibrium curve?
Me - Answered
C - What is an azeotrope? How many types of azeotropes do you know? How will
you come to know about certain mixture that whether it is an azeotrope or not?
Me - Answered
Since Y - X curve cuts Y = X line once, they asked me the reason for this.
Me - I explained with the help of T - X , Y diagram extension.
F - Tell me about relative volatality where Y is less than X.

17
Me -(She actually wanted to ask me that whether it will be less than 1 or more than
1)I told that Ma’am relative volatality is always taken with respect to more volatile
component so we can never say that it is less than 1.
C - How do you design a distillation column? What methods do you know?
Me - Told them about two methods McCabe thiele and Ponchon Savarit.
C - What are the assumptions of McCabe thiele? How it is different from the
Ponchon Savarit?
Me - Explained all basic assumptions which leads to main assumption i. e. constant
molar overflow and cases where we use Ponchon savarit method.
M - Suppose, you are given to design a distillation column with McCabe thiele
method, What data you will need and how will you design it with the use of
minimum data information?
Me - I used the standard procedure but due to certain constrain R was unknown for
me, So I had to go for minimum reflux ratio first and then drawn the curve for
optimum reflux ratio and by the staircase method I determined no. of trays of
distillation column for the optimum operation.
C - Where is feed tray?
Me - Answered
C - What each stair represents? Which point represents incoming liquid composition
and outgoing liquid composition on the tray?
Me - Answered
He looked satisfied.
M - What are dry bulb temperature and wet bulb temperature?
Me - Explained both with examples.
M - Accha aap azamgarh se ho, vhaan pr aap cooler chalaaoge to paseena (Sweat)
jaldi sookhega but mumbai me aisa nhi hota itna jaldi kyu?
Me - Sir, Humidity is the reason behind it. In mumbai, due to humidity, driving force
for the vapor evaporation is less and compared to the places which are not so humid
so cooling effect is less here as compared to my home town azamgarh.
(In my answer I said cooling once so next they moved onto the cooling tower)
C - What do you know about cooling tower, how many types of cooling towers are
there? Draw the schematic diagram of the cooling tower operation.
Me - I explained the operation of cooling tower and catagorized them onto the
mechanical basis. (Some other cross questions were also there which I can not
remember right now, I will edit them if I would be able to recall them)
M - Where will be the pinch point in cooling tower?

18
Me - (I was knowing about pinch point in heat exchanger networking but never
heard about pinch point in cooling tower so i decided not to answer) Don’t know sir.
What is distillation.
They gave 4 examples how to separate (salt +water,ethanol +water ,oil+water,
ammonia +gas ).Distillation se konsa mixture separate karoge aur kyun.
Other mixture kaise separate karoge .
Which mechanism are the separation based on.
Explain other mass transfer operations.
What is extraction? Driving force for extraction.What property solvent should have in
extraction?What is separtion factor? What is selectivity? What is solvent power?What
is partition coefficient?
Now coming to distillation design column.How to design column? What parameters
you need in designing.
What is Mcabe thiele assumption?Explain assumption in details.
Derive operating line equation.
How you Calculate efficiency of tray and column?
What is Rmin ,Ropt ,q ? What is feed location?
How to decrese number of plates without manipulating reflux ratio?
What is volatility,relative volatity,formula ,variation of relative volatility with pressure?
Where is maximum minimum temperature pressure in column?
How vapor and liquid flow in distillation column?
High pressure gas kaise milegi.Why pressure drop occurs?What is difference between
blower and compressor?

19
On the day of the interview, you have to report at the Multipurpose Hall, BARC Training School
Hostel, Anushaktinagar. The first step is they will provide some forms to fill and one among that
is the preference for which training school you want if you are selected. After filling them
document verification is done and will give you the interview token, that will be you pass at
security gates and number in that corresponds to interviewing order, so if you want to get over
with quickly you have to do all those form filling and documentation fast otherwise you could be
the last one on that day. Then they will send you to BARC training school to do biometric and
photos and there you need to wait for your interview. Always remember to carry token with you
at the security gates when you go for lunch.

Depending on your time slot and the token number they will call you for the interview. The panel
consisted of 6 people. They enquired about travel and stay, college and hometown. They then
told to write 4 favourite subjects on an A4 sheet. Then one of the people took the paper and
read it. My order was chemical reaction engineering, heat transfer, fluid, and mass transfer.
Instead of starting with CRE they question regarding the last three

1. What are the similarities between the last 3 subjects?

2. What is driving force and resistance and what is driving force in each?

3. The common term in all three transfer operations?

Then they started questions from CRE. One of them passed a paper having 4 CSTRs in 6
different parallel and series combination and for a given second-order reaction

4. Arrange the combinations in the descending order of overall conversion.

5. For an industrial application which combination will be optimum considering conversion, cost
and instrumentation

Two parallel reactions were given have unknown orders and rate constant
6. How to find the rate constants and orders of the parallel reactions if you are provided with a
batch reactor having concentration monitor are connected?

Another set of parallel reactions are provided with unknown rate constants and orders but one
of the reaction is marked as the desirable reaction

7. How to maximize the production of desirable product and increase the rate of production?

Heat transfer operations

8. The physical significance of thermal diffusivity, thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity

9. If you are holding rods of different thermal conductivity and specific heat capacities, and one
end of the rod is exposed to a high temperature which rod will transmit heat faster?

Two tapered cylinders whose curved surface is insulated are connected at the smaller radius
end and one end of the set-up is maintained at a higher temperature than the other.

10. Draw one-dimensional temperature profile for the set up based on Fourier law of heat
conduction

11. At what point heat flux will be maximum and what about heat transfer rate

Asked about the mode of heat transfer and about how each one is occurring, and factors
affecting radiative heat transfer

12. What is view-factor? How it's calculated? Calculate all view factors of an arrangement of a
small sphere inside a spherical enclosure and what if there is no enclosure

13. Asked to touch some metallic object and a wooden paperweight on the table and asked
what do I feel? Although those two objects were exposed to the same temperature and pressure
condition also attained steady-state being in the same condition for many hours why there is a
sensation of difference in temperature on both on touching?

14. If you are in a place with subzero temperatures if you touch cold metal surfaces your hand
will stick to the surface and sometimes peel off your skin, same happens in the refrigerator
evaporator surface, the reason behind that.
15. You are provided with an 8mm glass block and two similar glass block of 4mm thickness. All
are made of the same material. The two 4mm glass blocks are joined together to form a single
block. Which block will have a higher effective thermal conductivity?

Fluid flow operations

16. What are the guidelines for designing a pipeline?

If you have to transport water at a rate of 10,000m3/hr from a lake in Kollam(my college
location) which is at 1000m above MSL to Mumbai which is located at MSL.

17. How will you transport water; open channel or pipeline; pump or gravity flow; line sizing; if
the pump is used single pump or intermediate pumping station?

Two tanks located at a height difference of ‘H1’m. A centrifugal pump is used to pump water
from the lower elevation tank to the higher elevation one. But due to some space constrain
piping has to go through a height of ‘H2’m and then discharges to the top tank. Given H2>H1.

18. What is system characteristics and pump characteristics?

19. Draw system characteristics of both situations. Reason for deviation.

20. Will pumping power change with the change in piping?

21. Different arrangements of open tanks at different elevation and closed vessels having
different pressures are connected and to predict the flow direction and how to reverse the flow
without additional piping or pieces of equipment.

Mass Transfer operations

22. The physical significance of the diffusivity coefficient

An adsorption bed operating at 30 deg C is used to remove component B from a gas mixture of
A and B. a concentration analyser is connected at the outlet of the adsorption bed.

23. Plot concentration of A and B vs time at 30 deg C

24. Reason for the shape of the curve and how will the change in temperature affect the shape
of the curve? At 60 deg C changes in the plot.

25. What temperatures are favourable for different types of adsorption(physical and chemical
adsorption)?

26. How will you design an absorption column?

An absorption tower used to absorb H2S from a mixture of H2S and CO. Inlet gas composition
is 3% H2S and 97% CO. Liquid used is free from H2S. 90% of H2S has to be absorbed into the
liquid.

27. Design methodology for the above situation. Draw a graph and explain.

28. If the liquid flow rate is 1.1 times the Lmin, what will be the new operating point? how will it
affect recovery?

Interview duration was 1hr 15min.

I gave my BARC interview back in 2014 and over the years I have seen some peculiar sets of
questions that keep repeating itself over time. Even though the
question flow will change a lot depending upon your response, more often than not you might
find yourself crawling over these topics.

I think I would will go through 3 most repeated question patterns and further subject wise topics
that are generally repeated.

1. Temperature (T), concentration (C) and velocity profiles(V) (most common)

Natural convection profile of different surfaces ( flat, cylinder, infinite surfaces, sphere , pipe etc).
T&V profiles in a pipe with laminar flow, turbulent flow, Surface at constant temp or heat flux,( or
opposite with heat sink with constant cold surface temperature)
T&V profile in a forced convection ( Mainly to show Von Karman Eddies)
T profiles in a composite insulation
T Profiles in shell and tube & double pipe heat exchanger ( Co-current and counter current)
T &V profiles in Fins of heat exchangers of different shapes.
Difference in T&V profiles of fins that are air cooled/liquid cooled.
Profile change if replaced by liquid of lower/higher specific heat, velocity etc.
C profiles of water vapor above pond surface, hot tea cup etc.
Distillation columns, absorption column, stage wise C profile. ( Some practical questions like
Concentration profile along vertical direction in a still salt pan during slow evaporation under the
sun , as salt water profile is completely different from pure water in terms of convection , refer to
solar pond)
Tracer concentration profiles in combination of CSTR and PFR. Implication of long tail,etc ( You
will have to study "compartment model" part of levenspiel of different non ideal profiling)
2. Dimensionless numbers, Boundary layer ( Second Favourite)

Along with various T, Vand C profiles, do also learn the TBL, VBL and conditions at which one
comes above or below the others
BL in transition form laminar to turbulent in plates, pipes ( fins will be same as plates) etc
Dimensionless numbers and their practical applications. ( lot of permutation and combinations of
questions in this part )
By-heart approx relationships of heat heat transfer coefficient of various geometry like h is
directly proportional to Gr / Pr/Re etc
Approx viscosity , Pr ranges of different liquids. Approx h ranges at different conditions ( natural
convection, geometry etc) . Approx Re transition ranges at different geometry
3. Control Systems

Learn to draw control systems with feed back loops and feed forward loops of typical control
problems
Eg. Flow control /Batching into a reactor
Pr-requisites: Learn all the p&ID symbols and application of different instruments and flow
system. The reactor you draw should have;

Level indicator ( contact / non-contact type ) Eg. ultrasonic, radar type, simple glass tube ,
magnetic ( learn symbols andknow the limitations and rough cost)
Load cells for batch weighing. ( tell verbally to Install stray rods so that agitation dynamic load
will not be transferred to load cell)
Vent for vapour and scrubber line for off gasses
Vent for vapour and scrubber line for off gasses
Select a suitable head depending upon the process condition. Fabrication point of view
torrispherical heads are most preferred. Flat bottom head for storage purpose only. Conical
head for slurry. Depending upon pressure Torrisphecial< Elliptical< hemispherical
Temperature indicator ( RTD, thermocouple etc)
Agitator ( verbally convey the type of agitator , generally PBT-45 is used) and motor and gear
box.
Type of automation including control valve, mass flow meter, gas flow meter, solenoid valves etc
Type of pumps to be used ( metering pump for controlled flow if required)
Logic of feed back/ feed forward loop.
Generally a P&ID diagram that you draw should be able to incorporate all these.

Always make sure you differentiate between pneumatic and process lines. Always keep in mind
that centrifugal pumps have other accessories like strainer, drain valve, header and should
located below the bottom line of tank (needs priming).

Just like this temperature control in a jacketed vessel, distillation column etc can also be asked.

Now coming to individual subjects wise topics other than discussed above:

Heat transfer

Relation between K, h with various factors . Ways to increase h.

Heat ex changers- design and basic knowledge
Condensers- design and basic knowledge
Most questions will be of akin to real world problems that you have to logically answer drawing
from laws of conduction, convection and radiation. ( basic but logical, can't help you on that)
Fluid Mechanics

Fluid mechanics usually starts with Bernoulli's equation and several questions associated with it.
Eg. Can a fluid from from low elevation to high elevation with pressure in both chambers being
the same. ( always remember gravity+ pressure+ velocity heads = total energy of fluid, it will
always flow from high energy to low energy, so see the net effect)
Pumps ( NPSH, pressure heads conversion, selection, application of different class of pumps,
advantages of metering pump vs centrifugal pumps)
Sometimes the interview starts with boundary layer theories also. Since it involves just mugging
up the theory no tricky questions are bound to come from that,
Balancing buoyancy forces ( learn calculation as it is the starting of drag calculations also)
Not so common questions : fully developed flow, design of agitator/impeller . This is usually
followed by questions on the basis of affinity laws, (study McCabe chapter on agitation) &
performance curves of pumps
Process Control Systems
As I have mentioned earlier a major portion of your interview time would be consumed in the
construction of a particular control system strategy, therefore the frequency of other questions
are comparatively less.

P, I & D and its combination of response curves.

Response of first order systems and its difference with second order.
Response time taken by system to reach final value
Mass Transfer
Generally the candidates tend to place mass transfer or heat transfer as their first choice ,
hence the Interview committee is well equipped with a barrel round of questions if you happen
to place “mass transfer” as your first choice. If you are good in either of the two you can easily
consume a lot of time in that particular subject. Domain of questions in mass transfer is huge
but generally lacks depth unlike other subjects. Even though Absorption and Distillation are
asked the most, it is advisable to study all the following relevant topics:

Equilibrium curves of different processes such as absorption, distillation, leaching, drying etc.
Stage representation in Cross flow, counter current and co-current flow.
Basic calculation of Liquid-liquid extraction ( organic-aqueous)
Equipment selection and operation principle for different operations: Leaching, (filtration also),
drying, absorption, Liquid-liquid extraction
Distillation ( Sample Questionnaire)
Meaning of horizontal and vertical lines in McCable thiele diagram
stage efficiency, ideal stage efficiency vs real efficiency
vapour pressure coefficient vs relative volatility, pinch point,
variation in operating lines with respect to feed composition and reflux, pinch point vs minimum
reflux,
difference in x-y equilibrium diagram for low pressure distillation,
McCabe diagram in case of multiple feed entry/exit
Type of distillation column ,
Conc.- Temp-Pressure profiles stage wise,
why can’t reboilers and condensers be combined to save energy?
Similar questions can be expected in absorption too. Factors effecting gas phase absorption,
Selection of equipment (for Ammonia & water , tray or bubble cap or sieve or packed vs spray
vs venturi, which type to chose and based on what factor ?), loss of packing efficiency reasons,
how to increase absorption efficiency/performace ( learn each and every factor),
learn all the mass transfer equivalents of heat transfer.
Chemical Reaction Engineering
Mostly the interview will start with RTD response curve/Arrhenius Law or a typical
PFR/MFR/batch/real reactor difference.

Arrhenius law (Sample Questionnaire)

what happens to rate of reactions if you increase the temperature of an exothermic reaction/
endothermic reaction ?
What happens to Ko? draw Arrhenius law graph.
why reactions doubles at lower temp but not higher temp ?
What if you double activation energy ?
will a reaction stop if I increase activation energy 10 times ( pointing values on graph) ?
What if I add an inert reactant into the reactions , what all factors are effected ?
First order, second order, pseudo first order and zero order reaction graphs, equations and test
to identify it. Also the t1/2 of the reaction and its real implication in identifying the reaction order.
Concentration profile variation with time of competing reactions , parallel reactions, series
reactions etc with reactions reversible or irreversible. Curve for auto- catalytic reaction
Arrangements of reactors in series and parallel and its optimization for minimum volume
Arrangement of reactors in series and paralllel and its different rtd respose. Also the same with
varying amount of recycle and bypass.
Non-ideal flow types and it’s rtd response
Residence time and hold time difference in rtd response external, also show internal profile.
Hope this helps !
Me: may I come in?

Member 1: yes please sit down

They were in hurry, I didn't even get chance to wish them good evening (honestly they don't
care either)

M1: (member of interview panel =M from now on) so are you staying at hostel of BARC?

Me:yes sir .

M1:did you properly have lunch?

Me:yes sir.

I wasn't looking nervous or worried so they didn't waste much time in introduction and all (they
don't care about that either, if you are terrified then they might spend 10min to calm you down)

They gave me a pencil and an A-4 size page.

M1:ok, Ashish now we want you to write 4-5 subjects you are most comfortable in.

Me: (writing and speaking at the same time as each of the five members were noting down
these subjects in a piece of paper of there own) 1.Strength of material

M1:you can use short forms

Me: 2)FM

3)HT

4)MD

5. Basic Thermodynamics

M1 gave M2 signal to start.

M2:ok, there's a bar with load of 3P acting on one of it's side, what will be the stress?

Me:there will be no stress if we neglect all frictions. Body will accelerate with a=3P/m

M2: we add a force of 5P on other side. Now what will there be stress?
Me: (after thinking for few seconds)body will have a stress of 3P/A and acceleration of 2P/m

M2:will the stress be uniform longitudinally or will it vary?

Me: Sir this is a case of dynamic analysis, in btech we have studied till static stress analysis so if
I have to go based on that then it will be uniform longitudinally but it might be possible that it
varies from maximum at 5P side and minimum at 3P side.

M1:but will there be stress at all?

Me:yes sir stress will be present.

M1:ok Ashish, if I drop a ball from certain height will there be stress when it freely falls?

Me: are we considering air drag?

M1:No.

Me: Then there will be no stress.

M1:then how is this bar stressed?

Me:sir, if we consider that same ball falling freely and tie it with an elastic band on top and then
let it fall then it is both falling and resisting against the band, in this case there will be stress in
the ball since it is resisting aginst something.

M1:ok(indicating M3 to ask his question)

M3: (draws a tank with one hole at bottom face, one at outlet of vertical pipe attached at bottom
face and last also at bottom but on vertical face) what are velocities at each of these outlets?

Me:(using bernoulli's equation derived velocities)

M1:now buckets under each stream at same level, which one will fill first?

Me:first one.

M1:why?

Me:highest velocity

M2:which one will fill second?

Me:other 2 will fill simultaneously.... Ok wait... Stream from third hole is having a projectile type
stream

I started using equations of projectile motion.. Filled almost a page...

M1:Is this necessary?

M3:what are you trying to do?

Me:sir, I am trying to find the velocity of stream just before it gets into bucket as that would give
us volume flow rate and as we know volume of bucket we can find time taken to fill it.

M1:ok continue.

Me: further using projectile motion equations in x and y axis.

M4:(after 4-5 seconds) sometimes analysis is not necessary. Use your engineering sense,
which one do you think will fill faster.

M2:yes use method of feeling.

Me: (after few seconds, trying to feel) I think second hole will fill first.

M1: sure?

Me: (thinking)

M1:do you think in third hole water has to travel larger distance?

Me:yes sir, I get it.

M1:Is this the only reason for 2nd stream filling bucket before 3rd one?

Me:yes sir.

M1:ok, indicating 5th member to ask question.

M5: have you done tensile test?

Me:sir, I've not done it because our college didn't had the apparatus, but I've seen videos on it.

M5:What does the specimen look like?

Me: (drew the shape) the length to diameter ratio is 10:1, lines are marked on specimen at
equal interval.

M5:how do we measure stain?

Me:we use stain gauge.

M5: how is it placed?

Me:showed it in drawing

M5:why are lines marked?

Me:after some time elongation becomes large enough, we don't need stain gauge anymore and
we can measure it directly using these lines.

M5: draw stress station curve.

Me:for?

M1:Mild steel

Me: drawing and explaining at the same time.

M5: explain various points.

Me: (explained)

They did not get into dislocation theory and luder's band.

M2:see Ashish, fracture point has lower stress than what we had even before upper yield point
so why doesn't it fall there itself?

Me: (thinking for 3-5 seconds) sir the stress what we are showing here is the force divided by
original area, actually after ultimate stress point necking will take place and actual stress will
increase.

M4:what is that stress called?

Me:true stress.

M4:(has a smile on his face) and what is this stress called? the one you have shown on y axis?

Me:Engineering stress.
M3:Now draw the diagram for aluminium.

Me: (drawn)

M1:Where's the yield point?

Me: specefic yield point is not visible in stress strain curve of aluminium.

M3:how do we know it for engineering purposes?

Me: (even though I knew the answer I knew this is a bit high level question that most
Mechanical engineering students are not aware of, so I pretended to think and recall and
answered in 2-5 seconds) sir there's something called proof stress.

M1:what is it?

Me:sir we draw a line with slope equal to modules of elasticity and having intersection at x axis
at 0.02% strain. Wherever this line intersect the curve is our yield point.

M1:Good.

Tip: see there are two ways of impressing interviewers, either give all the answers you know
instantly in which they will keep on raising difficulty level and ultimately you will reach a point
where whatever you have studied is covered and now they will ask questions in portion you
have not studied and you are forced to think and use your imagination. Or play in area you are
comfortable in, just pretend to be uncomfortable, show that you are thinking and the answers
are not recorded in your head. Because how far you can think beyond what you have studied is
all they want to see. For you 1st law of thermodynamics might be easy and entropy might be
difficult, for them everything is easy like A, B, C, D... to you. They just want to see if you are able
to think beyond what you've studied. Obviously they also check whether you know your basic
subjects well but that part everyone is good at, that is necessary condition but not sufficient.
Now I'm not saying that do this pretending thing at every question because then they will see
right through it. But whenever you get a chance add it. But for doing this you have to remain
calm. BARC was the only interview I had as my GATE 2017 rank was 1825 and I had already
dropped an year after btech so pressure was high but I learned to control it. I knew if I have to
make it happen tension and worry will not help me and that a calm and composed mind can do
anything it wants to.

M4: two vertical bars, one with area A and another with area 2A,same material ,fixed at top to a
rigid support and at bottom to a rigid bar which remains parallel to horizontal as we apply Force
in vertical direction. Which bar will fail first?

Me:(using compatibility equation to find force in both members)

M4: what are you trying to do?

Me: sir, I'm trying to find out stress in each of the bars the i'll divide it with area to find stress,
which ever will have higher stress will fail first.

M4:ok, continue.

Me: (found out that F2=2F1)sir, stresses will be same (I was little surprised myself)

M1: but how is that possible? Area of cross sections are different.

Me:Sir, forces will be different but area of cross sections are also different so stresses are same.
We can see if in another way too, as lower rigid bar remains parallel, strain in both bars are
same and since material is both members are same modules of elasticity are same thus
stresses will be same in both.

M1: there is a pipe with uniform heat flux through out its length, water is passing through it, inlet
temperature is 25C outlet temperature is 160C, pressure is 1atm..draw the temperature profile
of water?

Me:(drew a straight line with positive slope from inlet to outlet)

M1:are you sure?

Me: ( thinking for few seconds) ok sir there's a mistake.

M1:use the eraser.

Me:(drawing again, drew a curve-positive slope-decreasing slips) sir as the water passes is
temperature will rise so heat flux will decrease thus rate of heat transfer will decrease.....

M1:heat flux is constant.

Me: ok, that slipped my mind, then slope will also be constant i.e. We will get a straight line...
(thinking for few seconds..)

M1:see, water is entering,what do you think is leaving ?

Me:ok, it will become stream till it reaches outlet.

M1:draw the curve .

Me:(drew straight line, positive slope then at 100C 0 slope till some distance then again positive
slope till 160C)

M1:which portion will have maximum length?

Me: q.x=mc(dT) and q.x= m(LH). If mass flow rate is m, heat flux per unit length is q an x is
unknown for each of the tgree portions. We can find x factor r each portion.

M1: use the values and find out which lenghth is largest.

Me: c of water in s 4.18kj/kgK latent heat of evaporation is 2300 Kj/kgK and Cp of steam( trying
to recall for few seconds) sir, I dont remember.

M1:ok, compare the first two.

Me: x is proportional to c and LH. So second portion will be much longer than first portion.

M1: what is triple point?

Me: it is the point at which all three phases, solid, liquid and gases exist in equilibrium.

M1:what is critical point temperature for water.

Me: 273.16C

M1: are you talking about critical point?

Me: oh sorry sir, did you ask critical point?

M1:yes, what is it?

Me: ok, critical point is something completely different than triple point, it is the point at or
beyond which liquid will dirrectly convert to gaseous phase whithout consuming any latent heat.

M1: ok what is critical point pressure and temperature for water?

Me: (trying to recal for 2-3 seconds) sir I cannot remember.

M1:Ok(indicating M4 to ask next question)

M4:(drew a structure with conical part on left and attached to it a cylindrical part, like a nail, left
side temp. Is 400k,left side it is 300k) draw the temperature profile.

Me:(drew curve with increasing slope in left portion and staight line on right portion.
M1:draw the curve outside too. Surrounding's temperature is 300 and 400 not the surface temp.

Me: ok sir then there will be formation of thermal boundary layer.

M2:draw it.

Me: (drew it) sir natural connection will be taking place.

M2:No no draw the temperature profile.

Me:(drew it, decreasing slope outside)

M2:what do you think will be the thickness of this thermal boundary layer?

Me: it will be small, we can actually feel it if we are physically present near the surface.

M2:how thick? Is it in mm or cm or m?

Me: few cms sir.

M1: if in this stucture(nail one),we drill a hole throughout how will the curve change.

Me:it will be like this only.

M1: no no, there will be some chabges.

Me:sir, the hole is if constant cross section so in left part area is area will change but it is still
similar function of x as before.

M2:you are not listening what he is getting to say, listen carefully (by now more than 75 minutes
had passed and my enery was completely drained out since I already waited for 6 hours before
interview, and on top of that I was the only one, the interviewers didn't offer anything to eat or
drink for all the time I was in interview room)

M1: See Ashish, the graph will be similar but do you think slope will change?

Me:Yes sir, slopes will definitely change.

M1:will or increase or decrease?

Me: sir, q=kA(dt/dx)

M1:what is that law called?

Me: ( thinking for 5-6 seconds, I was confused between Fourier's law and Newton's law of
cooling, taking your time to give correct answer in one shot is always better than speaking
quickly and being wrong) Fourier's law.

M1: so, increase our decrease?

Me: slope is inversely related to area of cross section. As in drilling hole, area decreases so
slope will increase.

M1: Ok Ashish you can go now.

Me:Thank you sir(going out )

M4: please leave the pencil.

Me: (with a smile) sorry sir.

M4:Thank you Ashish, all the best.

Gyansu viswakarma

Result – Selected

November
Chemical Reaction Engineering –

Q–1

Q–2

Q–3

In a batch reactor zero order exothermic rxn is taking place. In one case it is operated
isothermally and in other case it is operated adiabatically.

Plot conc. Of reactant vs time for both cases on same graph. Explain the differences of both
curves.
Q–4

An exothermic first order rxn taking place isothermally in a batch reactor. The heat is being
removed through cooling water jacket.

Will the rate of removal of heat will be constant at all times. If not, what will be nature of variation
of cooling water flow rate.

Q–5

On what basis we define heat of reaction?

Q–6

Write heat balance equation for BATCH reactor.

Fluid Mechanics –

Q – 1 Draw a venturi meter and pressure profile along flow direction.

Q – 2 What is reason of flow of fluid in venturi meter? If it is pressure drop then why we see
increase in divergent section along the flow?

Q – 3 If we start to decrease the throat diameter, what is limit and why?

Q – 4 Why divergent section is longer? If flow direction is reversed in a venturi meter, will it still
measure the flow? If yes, will the flow be accurate? What will happen to manometric deflection,
will it shift to another limb of manometer?

Q – 5 Pointing toward water bottle - If a small hole is at the bottom and it is filled with water and
allowed to drain. Plot height of water in bottle vs time curve, and explain why so?

Heat Transfer –

Q–1

In a batch reactor, how heat transfer takes place in non-adiabatic reaction. (they mean to write
Nusselt no as function of Reynold and Prandtl no. And also define Reynold no in this case)

Q–2

Why temperature profiles are curvilinear in fluid layers when heat transferred across a solid wall
but linear in solid itself?
Q–3

Draw 1-2 pass shell and tube heat exchanger. How I will increase the overall heat transfer
coefficients, without changing feed flow rates and their parameters.

(I told them, reduce the baffle spacing, decreasing the tube diameter, cleaning of tubes etc. they
did not care all these explanations and asked me to think something else. I took time and told
we will fin the tubes, and all agreed)

General Questions

What does 95 represents in N95 mask? (As I was wearing an N95 mask) Is it effective against
Corona Virus?

Should we use N95 mask in case of chlorine gas present in air? If not, then what are ways?
 Hariom meena NPCIL
1.Than asked to write down some favorite subjects i wrote thermo,fluid,som,heat transfer &
R.a.c.

2.one started with basic piston cylinder questions like if a piston and cylinder heated than which
process draw pv diagram,if you put sudden mass on piston than which process draw pv
diagram,if we put that mass very slowly in fractions than which process i said isothermal than he
told me to draw same pv diagram and than told me to compare both the process in pv diagram
like work donw,final pressure etc.i answered very well to these questions as i already prepared
those.

3 than he made a opening to the middle of the cylinder to the atmosphere and repeated the
same above questions like mass put suddenly and in franctions now draw pv diagram(first upto
hole when piston comes it is constant pressure process as it open to atmosphere but after that
same concept adiabatic in sudden mass and isothermal in slow mass).same avove questions
like pv diagrams and final state.

4.how work can be calculated from pv diagram and what are rhe conditions to be occur to
isothermal and adiabatic processes.

5.than they move to fluid mechanics and gave a building with 8 floors and a pump is put on the
base of the building with a water tank there and told that water is not delivering to the 7 and 8
floor why. I suggest n.p.s.h. Concept than they asked evrything about npsh and told me to
calculate n.p.s.h. Of that pump.

6.next one asked about my intern from where and what you learned there….diesel locomotive
works varanasi than asked questions like…..i.compression ratio of diesel and petrol engine

ii.kis engine m kisko mix kr sakte h petrol m dieslel ya diesel m petrol

iii.konsa engine heavy hota h and why.

iv.kiske cylinder ka pressure jyada hota h now came to design of cylinder.

7.now som design of cylinder gave some data and told me to calculate the thikness.i assumed
some diameter than asked me about material i told cast iron i took some fector of safety and
u.t.s than they asked about u.t.s and stress strain diagrams for cast iron and mild steel and
tensile test for mild steel,tumne kiya h kabhi i told group m koya h sir collage m than he asked
kese krte h konsi machine hoti h machine kya measure ktti h diagram of specimen etc.and
kisme strain jyada hoti h cast iron or mild steel and values of u.t.s. And yield stress or both.

8.than they asked some questions to production like kon konsi process hoti h forming ki…uses
of casting,wha ek bell rakhi thi ye kese banti h iske upar layer kese hoti h (electroplating) asked
what is electroplating what is 3d printing etc.some questions on stainless steel
composition,property and how it resist corrosion and what is the product if chromium reacts with
oxygen etc.

9.than finally some qustions about npcil tumhare kota k near konsa plant h kabhi visit kie ho
baaki plants kha kha h etc…last hum rajasthan walon ko maharasthra m locate krte h will you
face any problem and kon konsi psu k interview die h av tak.

Interview ended for around 1 hour and 10 minutes.it was very nice exeperience to face such
kind of interview.

Result declared got selected in NPCIL as training scientific officer…

Please avoid grammatical mistakes if any

Interviewr — so kya kya padhai hai aapne ?

Me-- sir Mass transfer , heat transfer , chemical reaction engineering , fluid mechanics.

Interviewer — acha mere paas 2 miscible liquid hai aap isko kaise seperate kroge !? Distillation
se ya extraction se aur kyu !?

Me — sir mai isko LLE se seprate krunga kyuki vapor phase genrate krne mein cost jaada lgta
hai aur LLE mera cost effective padega

Interviewer — acha Kaun si property dono mein dhyaan rakhna padega ! Aur unki definition kya
hai ?

Me-- told about relative volatility and seprability in both methods .

Interviewr — acha relative volatility kitna hona chahiye !?

Me —- sir itna 1 se jaada hoga utna acha hoga !

Meanwhile other interviewer — “ ha sahi baat h jitna kam hoga 1 se utna difficult hojaaega wo “

They were constantly trying to confuse me !

Me — no sir difficult nhi hoga less than one ka mtlb hai other species jaada volatile hoga aur
separation hoga tb bhi , but agar relative volatility 1 hoga toh problem hoga .

Interviewer — 1 hoga toh kya krenge !?

Me — toh sir we can go for extractive and azeotropic distillation

Interviewer —- acha pressure ka use bhi toh krte h ! Me — yes sir presuure swing adsorption ka
use krte h , pressure kam krdene se Bubble point niche hojaata toh separation easily hota !

Interviewer — acha aap LLE kelie no. Of plates nikaal skte ho kya !?

Me — yes sir , absorption ke analogy se nikaal skta hu!

Then they send me to greenboard with chalk and asked me to find no. Of plates for simple
system in LLE tower and also derive the operating line equations . I did it correctly and found
no. Of plates .

Interviewer — acha yesb mitaa do aap , aap ek distillation column bnaao !

Me — drew the distillation column and told them various components of it

Interviewer — aap ismein 2 feed ke saath no. Of plates kaise nikaalenge ye btao !

me — afterthinking sometimes told them sir nhi pata !

interviewer— acha aap 1 feed ke saath btaao ?

Me — derived the whole upper operating line , lower operating line equations marked them on
graph correctly and told them how to find out no. Of plates !

Interviewer — acha feed line eqn. Bhi toh use hoti h !

They were trying to give me hint for the 2 feed question but at that time I couldn't relate this hint
with question
me — yes sir wo humlog R min. Nikaalne kelie krte hai !
First they try to make you comfortable in the environment (In my case I was quite nervous) by
asking simple questions. From where are you, where did you study, gate score, barc test score.

A- Kaafi late ho gaye aap (Did you come late?)?

Ans- No Sir. The document verification sequence gave me such queue.

M- (Helping me out) There is mixed crowd.

Me nodding along with M.

A- So which language would you like to prefer Hindi or English.

Me- English.

A- What have you studied in Chemical Engineering during you GATE preparation.

Me- Fluid Mechanics, Mass Transfer, Heat Transfer, Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics,
etc.

B- What kinds of books were followed by you during your preparation?

Me- Answered some standard books like McCabe, Van Ness Smith, CD gel for fluid,etc.

A- What are your favourite subjects write them (they handed me a piece of A4 size paper and
pencil)

I started with Fluid Mechanics, Heat transfer, Mass Transfer, Chemical Engineering
Thermodynamics, Chemical Reaction Engineering.

A- Write the starting governing equation with which we start our study of F.M., H.T, M.T. ?

Me- I started with the Newton law of viscosity, Fick’s first law of diffusion and then wrote the
Fourier’s equation.

A- You have given negative sign in ficks eqn and fouriers equation but positive sign in Newton’s
law.

Me- It is due to the sign convection followed during the derivation. Then I drew the fluid between
to parallel plates and coordinates to explain the sign convection.

A- Okay, But Wouldn’t it be convenient if we chose same sign convection in all.

Me- Being nervous and confused I said Yes sir.

FLUID MECHANICS

A- There is a straight cylindrical pipe and fluid is flowing through it. Draw the variation of
Pressure along length

Me- Answered.

B- Why the profile is like this?

Me- Explained using the equation for drop due to friction in cylindrical for laminar flow(Hagen
Poiseuille equation )

A- Okay, but it is valid only for laminar flow what if want to find the pressure drop for turbulent
flow?

Me- Writing the pr drop eqn for turbulent flow.

C- What is f in this equation how do we find it.

Me- Answered that f is fanning friction factor and for laminar flow can be found using the Hagen
Poiseuille and the for turbulent using Moody chart

A- Draw the Moody’s diagram?

Me- Drew the diagram.

M- What type of axes are these log-log, semilog, Cartesian.

Me- Answered.

A- From Moody’s diagram What practical values f can take?

Me- Answered.

C- There are sometimes capital F, sometimes small how are they different?

Me- Answered one is Darcy friction factor and fanning.

D- I what type of flow the losses are maximum laminar or turbulent explain from the Moody’s
diagram.

Me- First I answered laminar. Then I got stuck by the counter questions asker afterwards.
D- How . Explain from the Moody’s diagram.

Me- Contradiction my own answer I told that we cannot compare as the friction factor in the
turbulent depends on roughness factor along with the Reynolds Number.

A,B,C,D,M didn’t look satisfied they moved on the simpler questions.

Fluid Mechanics question from the profile for Newton’s law of viscosity that I drew earlier.

D- In Mass Transfer mass get transported, in Heat Transfer heat got transferred, but in Fluid
Mechanics what is transported.

Me- I answered confidently that molecular momentum gets transported from higher velocity to
lower velocity in the direction perpendicular to velocity.

D- okay, The velocity profile you have drawn draw the profile for velocity gradient along the
momentum transport?

Me- Since I have drawn a linear profile the velocity gradient must be a constant. But at the time I
was unable to answer.

HEAT TRANSFER

B- (starting with a simple conduction question) there is a cylindrical rod and its sides surfaces
are insulated but the ends are at different

Temperature one is higher and other is lower. Draw the temperature versus length profile & heat
flux us. Length profile.

Me- answered.

B- now we remove a certain part of insulation from the middle and now draw the earlier
discussed profiles.
M e- I got stuck at this question started with the conventional approach but could not solve.
Despite of the hints provided by them

Mass transfer

A- what is relative volatility?

Me-Answered.

E- what should be value of relative volatility for distillation?

Me- answered.

C- can the value of relative volatility be variable?

Me- ( I did not answer correctly or what they wanted to hear) I told them that relative volatility
varies along the length of column during distillation

I drew the y - x . equilibrium diagram and tried explaining with them. (They wanted to azeotrope
so they gave the hint)

M e- answered azeotrope have variable relatively volatility and tried explain with a azeotropic
y-x equilibrium diagram ( then M asked me the

Counter-question)

M- why do the curve cut the y=x.

Me- answered.

M- what should the relative volatility on this side of intersection I other side of intersection.

Me-answered

E- suppose we have equal volumes of kerosene and water both make 1 liter and we supply heat
from the bottom can you draw the variation of

Temperature with time and T -x-y diagram.

Me- I was not able to answer this question. As I have not studied about the immiscible mixtures.

This was the last question they asked me.

I was told that I should answer confidently as you know almost everything but due to
nervousness did not deliver to the full potential. Unfortunately I was not in the final merit list. But
it was a experience and I hope it may help others.

-
There were 7 members(one lady) in panel.

Here is my interview
Mr Rahul how are you?
From which college are you.
Where are you presently staying in Mumbai?
You were selected for interview from gate score or barc paper.
How was the barc paper?
Have you prepared for interview?
How many subjects have you prepared ?
Wrote Mass transfer , Heat Transfer ,Fluid Mechanics ,Chemical reaction engineering
What is the driving force in all these subjects?
What is driving force in heat transfer ,mass transfer,fluid mechanics?
Lets start with mass transfer
Appliaction of mass transfer
What is distillation.
They gave 4 examples how to separate (salt +water,ethanol +water ,oil+water, ammonia +gas
).Distillation se konsa mixture separate karoge aur kyun.
Other mixture kaise separate karoge .
Which mechanism are the separation based on.
Explain other mass transfer operations.
What is extraction? Driving force for extraction.What property solvent should have in
extraction?What is separtion factor? What is selectivity? What is solvent power?What is partition
coefficient?
Now coming to distillation design column.How to design column? What parameters you need in
designing.
What is Mcabe thiele assumption?Explain assumption in details.
Derive operating line equation.
How you Calculate efficiency of tray and column?
What is Rmin ,Ropt ,q ?
What is feed location?
How to decrese number of plates without manipulating reflux ratio?
What is volatility,relative volatity,formula ,variation of relative volatility with pressure?
Where is maximum minimum temperature pressure in column?
How vapor and liquid flow in distillation column?
High pressure gas kaise milegi.Why pressure drop occurs?What is difference between blower
and compressor?
Then shifted to heat transfer.

Draw temperature profile for flow in pipe keeping heat flux at wall constant.
Profile linear or parabolic.
What will happen to profile if flowarate double will change or not?
What is h and on what factor h depend ?
How will you calculate heat flux in case of flow in pipe?
Draw the graph of heat flux variation for flow in pipe.
What is ditus bolter? Write ditus bolter.What is prandtl number,Reynolds Number,Nusselt
number?
Dependency of heat transfer coefficient on reynolds number.
Drew two slabs in parallel with different conductivity draw temperature profile in slabs ,whether
the temperature profile feasible or not?
Then they drew a frustom conical expander with its end at different temperature with sides
insulated draw the temperature profile variation with length,heat flux variation with length,heat
energy variation with length,variation is linear or quadratic.

Then fluid mechanics.

What is npsh,caviation?
What will vapor bubble do in pump ,their effect?
What is the difference if liquid and gas is used in pump?
Why volute is used,what is the disadvantage of high kinetic energy at outlet why we convert it?
Why we convert kinetic energy into pressure energy in volute only when the fluid with high
kinetic energy will go up in pipe there will no problem (ignore losses) then automatically it will
convert into pressure energy?
Explain working of centrifugal pump.
How impeller increase pressure energy?
Variation of density on head explain for oil water mercury ,draw there difference performance
curve.
What are Fan laws?
Ganga mein paani kaise behta hain.

CRE
They drew 3 combination of mfr and pfr in series of same volume gave second order kinetics
and explain physically in which conversion will be more and why?
What will happen at 0 order 1st order explain physically no maths ?
Single pfr mfr of same volume conversion difference .
Write performance equation of all reactor draw their graphs explain graph.
What is ideal pfr mfr batch reactor?
How concentration varies in ideal mfr along the length.
What are nonidealities in mfr pfr?Is laminar flow a nonideality in pfr?
How to predict nonideality in pfr?
What is 1 parameter model?
What is axial dispersion?
What is dispersion coefficeint?What is its value for ideal pfr mfr?

What will happen if laminar flow in pfr?

Why we need flat velocity profile in pfr?
What is ph ,molality ,molarity,normality,graph x3 and x2?
Which graph is increasing in which interval? What is composition of steel
Asked about college location,about college ,when it was open,campus placements,which psu
you applied for,npcil mein interview diya
You can go thanku.

Result got selected as training scientist officer

 Ajay yadav
Heat transfer, 2. Mass transfer, 3. Fluid mechanics, 4. Chemical Reaction engineering.
They started from Heat transfer.

C - What are the different modes of the heat transfer and differentiate between them?

Me - Answered with confidence about all three modes and cited certain differences.

C - Can you write governing equation of all three modes?

Me - I started from Fourier’s law then Newton’s law of cooling and Stefan Boltzmann’s law and
explained them well.

C - Why is there a negative sign in governing equation of conduction?

Me - Sir, because temperature gradient is negative in the direction of heat conduction, to make
heat flux positive we use negative sign.

F - Give us at least one example of each mode where only one type of heat transfer is taking
place?

Me - I was a bit shocked on this question since in many cases more than one type of heat
transfer takes place so I thought for a moment and answered them correctly.

M - How will you increase the radiation heat transfer?

Me - I mentioned about increasing view factor or temperature or emissivity.

C - What is view factor, Explain with diagram?

Me - I explained them about the concept of view factor and drawn different cases of view factor
with proper reasoning.

C - How will you increase emissivity?

Me - Answered.

Me - Then the chairman gave me a problem of uniform heat generation inside a cylinder of a
given dimensions with bottom and curved surfaces of it are insulated and top surface open to
the atmosphere and asked me that

What will happen after infinite time?

Derive the expression of temperature and draw the final temperature profile?
What will happen if we use a fan just above the top surface? How will be the temperature
profile, explain practically and analytically?
What will happen if we create vaccum instead of atmosphere?
Though I took my time, I answered each part of the question correctly. They were giving some
indirect hint wherever I got stucked.

F - How many types of flow of fluid inside heat exchanger are there?

Me - I told them all three types of flow i. e. Crossflow, countercurrent flow and co-current flow.

F - In a shell and tube type of heat exchanger, if steam is condensing on shell side (Losing only
latent heat) and water is getting heated on tube side, In which case LMTD will be more?
Whether in co-current flow or counter current flow also draw temp. profile?

Me - Comfortably drawn the temp. profile and answered that LMTD will be same for the both
types of flow in this case.

After they they all looked satisfied on my heat transfer portion and moved to Mass transfer.

The chairman drawn a curve between Y - X (Equilibrium curve) for minimum boiling azeotrope.

C - I have seen it somewhere and I could not understand what is it? Can you help me to know
about this curve?

Me - I told them that this is an equilibrium curve for a minimum boiling azeotrope.

C - What is an equilibrium curve?

Me - Answered

C - What is an azeotrope? How many types of azeotropes do you know? How will you come to
know about certain mixture that whether it is an azeotrope or not?

Me - Answered

Since Y - X curve cuts Y = X line once, they asked me the reason for this.

Me - I explained with the help of T - X , Y diagram extension.

F - Tell me about relative volatality where Y is less than X.

Me -(She actually wanted to ask me that whether it will be less than 1 or more than 1)I told that
Ma’am relative volatality is always taken with respect to more volatile component so we can
never say that it is less than 1.
C - How do you design a distillation column? What methods do you know?

Me - Told them about two methods McCabe thiele and Ponchon Savarit.

C - What are the assumptions of McCabe thiele? How it is different from the Ponchon Savarit?

Me - Explained all basic assumptions which leads to main assumption i. e. constant molar
overflow and cases where we use Ponchon savarit method.

M - Suppose, you are given to design a distillation column with McCabe thiele method, What
data you will need and how will you design it with the use of minimum data information?

Me - I used the standard procedure but due to certain constrain R was unknown for me, So I
had to go for minimum reflux ratio first and then drawn the curve for optimum reflux ratio and by
the staircase method I determined no. of trays of distillation column for the optimum operation.

C - Where is feed tray?

Me - Answered

C - What each stair represents? Which point represents incoming liquid composition and
outgoing liquid composition on the tray?

Me - Answered

He looked satisfied.

M - What are dry bulb temperature and wet bulb temperature?

Me - Explained both with examples.

M - Accha aap azamgarh se ho, vhaan pr aap cooler chalaaoge to paseena (Sweat) jaldi
sookhega but mumbai me aisa nhi hota itna jaldi kyu?

Me - Sir, Humidity is the reason behind it. In mumbai, due to humidity, driving force for the vapor
evaporation is less and compared to the places which are not so humid so cooling effect is less
here as compared to my home town azamgarh.

(In my answer I said cooling once so next they moved onto the cooling tower)

C - What do you know about cooling tower, how many types of cooling towers are there? Draw
the schematic diagram of the cooling tower operation.
Me - I explained the operation of cooling tower and catagorized them onto the mechanical basis.
(Some other cross questions were also there which I can not remember right now, I will edit
them if I would be able to recall them)

M - Where will be the pinch point in cooling tower?

Me - (I was knowing about pinch point in heat exchanger networking but never heard about
pinch point in cooling tower so i decided not to answer) Don’t know sir.

Then they moved to Chemical reaction engineering portion.

One panelist who was silent from the starting Started asking questions.

He drawn a PFR type system and given me three cases, in all cases entering flow rate and exit
flow rate are 1 L/S and 10 L/S respectively. He given me the example of corn seller where corn
inflation occures and due to that flow rate changes. In first case inflation occures at the end, in
2nd one inflation occures in the starting and in 3rd one 25% inflation occures in the starting and
rest 75% at the end point of the system. He asked me to draw E(t) and F(t) profile.

I had never though that there will be any problem of RTD with varying volume and I started
taking my time and told them about my problem. Then they asked me to draw it in constant
volumetric flow rate condition. I drawn them correctly.

Then again same person asked

M - How many types of reactors do you know? What are the assumptions applied?

Me - I told them about Batch, MFR and PFR and their assumptions and also explained about
PBR for homogeneous reaction system.

M - For the same inlet conditions, Which reactor will give more conversion, given the volume of
both reactors are same?

Me - For the positive order reaction, PFR will give more conversion and MFR will give less
conversion and for the other case vice-versa.

M - What is the reason behind it?

Me - Sir because for negative order, rate will be inversely proportional to the concentration,
since MFR converts instantaneously the reactant and concentration drops suddenly whereas in
the case of PFR, concentrations drops gradually. So rate will be more in the case of MFR as
compared to PFR for negative order of reaction. That’s why conversion is more in MFR for this
case.
M - If we devide a PFR into several parts of equal sized PFRs in series, In which case the
conversion will more? Tell the same thing about MFR?

Me - For PFR conversion will remain same after dividing into equal sized PFRs whereas for
MFR, if we devide the MFR into several equal volume reactors, final conversion will be more
because it will tend towards PFR behavior.

M - Suppose three equal volume MFR are in series and final conversion is 90%. Tell me about
approximate conversion after 1st and 2nd reactor?

Me - Sir, in first reactor conversion will be more than 30%, in 2nd reactor conversion difference
between outlet and inlet will be less then the first one and in the 3rd reactor, conversion
difference between outlet and inlet will be even lesser than 2nd reactor beacuse concentration
will drop and rate of reaction will get slow down.

Then they moved to Fluid mechanics portion.

M - What is friction factor? How do we get the value of friction factor?

Me - Explained them about friction factor and Moody’s chart.

M - Draw Delta P vs Flow rate curve for a pipe?

Me - Drawn the curve indicating different regimes and showing dependency of Delta P on Flow
rate.

M - Draw Friction factor vs length in a long pipe if fluid enters from one end and fluid flow
develops inside the pipe?

Me - (I was knowing the relation of friction factor for fully developed flow but not knowing about it
for developing flow) I tried to explain them what I think it should be, I told them that friction factor
would be more in developing region and would be constant for developed flow.

They were not looking satisfied but again chairman interrupted them and told me answer few
questions.

C - Have you heard the name of Stainless Steel? What is composition and property of it?

(This is when I thought that they are taking me seriously, which increased my confidence.)

Me - Yes sir, It is an alloy of carbon having Chromium and Nickel etc. as alloying material. They
are corrosion resistant and having high tensile strength.

C - Due to which component these properties are?

Me - Sir, I do not know about it (Because I literally had no idea about it)

C - What is pH value?

Me - Answered.

C - What is Le chatlier’s principle?

Me - Answered with examples.

C - What is Roult’s law?

Me - Answered

C - What is Dalton’s law?

Me - Answered

F - What does the 1 Ton of AC mean?

Me - I was unable to recall the exact value in thousands KJ of heat removal, but answered with
the help of their hint.

Then they all looked satisfied and asked me about my GATE rank and score. They also asked
whether I am having interview of NPCIL also. I said no sir, I hadn’t applied in NPCIL. Then they
asked me about my future plans? Whether I have applied for any M. TECH or Ph. D. ? I said
that no sir I have not applied.

F - Kaun kaun se questions aise the jo aapko quora pr mile the?

M - Ma’am, there are very less no. of answers about BARC interview experience in chemical
engineering. Some basic questions were matching.

F - So, would you share this interview experience also on quora?

Me - Yes ma’am, most probably.