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Drexel Library

Chemical and Biological Engineering

This course guide includes useful resources to assist students to find relevant information needed for their research, design projects, and assignments.

Primary Literature

An image of laboratory 6 vials with different color liquid in them.

Primary sources give details of experiments, results, and conclusions.
Try DragonSearch to find  peer reviewed research articles from scholarly journals. 

  • Use relevant research keywords related to your topic. 
  • For example, type ‘Ethylene Oxide Production' and click on Search.
  • Refine your search results by selecting options such as  'peer review' and 'Articles and more'.
  • Explore your results, find and access papers you need. 

Electronic Databases - Engineering

Journal articles can help you delve deeper into your topic than books and encyclopedias.  Review articles will give you an overview of the state of a field over a period of time (pay attention to the publication date; they go out-of-date quickly).  Research articles tell you exactly how a scientist performed his or her experiments and interpreted the results.

These resources help you find journal articles in various fields related to your projects.

Electronic Databases - Business and Industry

Standards

ASTM Standards Digital Library

ASTM Compass® is the platform that delivers ASTM standards and digital library content. Compass givefirsts you access to a vast collection of industry-leading standards and technical engineering information, including the ASTM journals and symposia papers (also known as Standard Technical Publications). ASTM Compass publications cover a broad range of engineering disciplines including aerospace, biomedical, chemical, civil, environmental, geological, health and safety, industrial, materials science, mechanical, nuclear, petroleum, soil science, energy, and solar engineering. ASTM Digital Library contains 1,700+ books, 51,000+ papers, chapters and articles. ASTM compass also provide tools including Compass Points, Version Comparison, sharing function to pass on knowledge, translated standards and more.

IEEE Standards:

  • IEEE Xplore  - Click on Standards
    With an active portfolio of nearly 1,300 standards and projects under development, IEEE is a leading developer of industry standards in a broad range of technologies.

Defense and federal specifications and standards

ASSIST Quick Search

Searching for standards from other organizations such as ISO or SAE.

Find standard number and the title for each standard you need from the other organizations.

  • ANSI Store - Search for ISO, IEC and other standards

MAD CAD

  • MAD CAD
    Mad Cad is a database with access to cross-referenced collections of building, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, fire, and maintenance codes from BOCA, SBCCI, ICBO, ICC, and NFPA. Some ASHRAE standards are also available.

To obtain any other standards, or if you have any other questions, please contact Jay Bhatt, Liaison Librarian for Engineering, Hagerty Library room 127, Email: bhattjj@drexel.edu

Standards are established norms or requirements for technical systems in industry. 

Patents

Companies tend to file for patents instead of publishing in journals because a patent grants the holder exclusive use of the technology described for a set period of time (usually 20 years).  60-80% of material in the patent literature is published nowhere else.  It is important for a company to understand the scope of protected technology to know in which areas they can freely operate.

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
The USPTO offers web access to bibliographic and full-text patent databases. These databases provide full-text of patents from 1976 to the present and full page images from 1790 to the present.

See 'General information concerning patents' and Patent FAQ

New to Patent Searching? See this important information about searching for patents:

The Patent Public Search tool is a new web-based patent search application that has two user selectable modern interfaces that provide enhanced access to prior art. The new, powerful, and flexible capabilities of the application improves the overall patent searching process.

Other patent sources: 

ESpacenet

Free access to over 150 million patent documents. Espacenet is accessible to beginners and experts and is updated daily. It contains data on more than 150 million patent documents from around the world.
See: Smart Search  Classification Search Advanced Search
Using Espacenet: Step by Step

The Lens:

Searches granted patents from the United States, Australia, and Europe, as well as published patent applications from the United States, Australia, Europe, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Allows a full-text search of many of these authorities' patents, and links to PDF where available. Visualizations help show where related patents are clustered.

PATENTSCOPE

Using PATENTSCOPE you can search 36 million patent documents including 2.2 million published international patent applications (PCT).

Google Patent Search 

Covers the entire collection of patents made available by the USPTO—from patents issued in the 1790s to present.

The Intellectual Property Digital Library- WIPO GOLD-IP Reference Resource 

WIPO GOLD is a free public resource which provides a one-stop gateway to WIPO’s global collections of searchable IP data. It aims to facilitate universal access to IP information. See International Patent Classification (WIPO). Use this tool to look up classifications on patents that interest you. Then, you can use them as search terms to locate related patents. The classifications, particularly in the chemical areas, are extremely detailed and group the patents nicely along types of technology.

 

 

 

More Information About Patents

These guides provide you with more in-depth information about various types of literature.