Introduction

Chemical engineers deal with processes that convert raw materials into useful products. Many times, these processes involve reactions followed by purification of the products, such as chemical reactions followed by concentration of the products, biological reactions followed by systems that recover and purify the products, or reactions and recovery of products on a nanometer scale. Overall, chemical engineers are process engineers—that is, chemical engineers deal with processes that produce a wide range of products.

1.1 A Brief History of Chemical Engineering

Chemical engineering evolved from the industrial applications of chemistry and separation science (i.e., the study of separating components from mixtures) primarily in the refining and chemical industry, which we refer to here as the chemical process industries, CPI. The first high-volume chemical process was implemented in 1823 in England for the production of soda ash, which was used to produce glass and soap.

In 1887, a British engineer, George E. Davis, presented a series of lectures on chemical engineering that summarized industrial practice in the chemical industry in Great Britain. These lectures stimulated interest in the United States and to some degree led to the formation of the first chemical engineering curriculum at MIT in 1888. Over the next 10 to 15 years, a number of US universities embraced the field of chemical engineering by offering curriculum in this area. In 1908, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers was formed and since has served to promote and represent the interests of the chemical engineering community.

Mechanical engineers understood the mechanical aspects of process operations, including fluid flow and heat transfer, but they did not have backgrounds in chemistry. Conversely, chemists understood chemistry and its ramifications but lacked the process skills. In addition, neither mechanical engineers nor chemists had backgrounds in separation science, which is critically important to the CPI. As a result, the study of chemical engineering evolved to meet these industrial needs.

The acceptance of the “horseless carriage,” which began commercial production in the 1890s, created a demand for gasoline that ultimately fueled exploration for oil. In 1901, Patillo Higgins, a Texas geologist, and Anthony F. Lucas, a mining engineer, later to be known as “wildcatters,” led a drilling operation that brought in the Spindletop Well just south of Beaumont, Texas. At the time, Spindletop produced more oil than all the other oil wells in the United States. Moreover, a whole generation of wildcatters was born, resulting in a dramatic increase in the domestic production of crude oil, which created a need for larger-scale, more modern approaches to crude refining. As a result, a market developed for engineers who could assist in the design and operation of processing plants for the CPI. The success of oil exploration was to some degree driven by the demand for gasoline for the automobile industry, and ultimately, it led to the widespread adoption of automobiles for the general population due to the resulting lower cost of gasoline.

These early industrial chemists/chemical engineers had few analytical tools available to them and largely depended on their physical intuition to perform their jobs as process engineers. Slide rules were used for performing calculations, and by the 1930s and 1940s, a number of nomographs were developed to assist them in the design and operation analysis of processes for the CPI. Nomographs are charts that provide a concise and convenient means to represent physical property data (e.g., boiling point temperatures or heat of vaporization) and can also be used to provide simplified solutions of complex equations (e.g., pressure drop for flow in a pipe). The availability of computing resources in the 1960s was the beginning of computer-based technology that is commonplace today. For example, since the 1970s, computer-aided design (CAD) packages have allowed engineers to design complete processes by specifying only a minimum of information; all the tedious and repetitive calculations are done by the computer in an extremely short period of time, allowing the design engineer to focus on the task of developing the best possible process design.

In 1959, Professors Bird, Stewart, and Lightfoot of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin published their textbook Transport Phenomena that covered fluid flow, heat transfer, and mass transfer. This book was widely adopted throughout the chemical engineering community and provided a much more mathematical and abstract analysis of these topics than had previously been used. The widespread use of this book ushered in a much more analytical approach to chemical engineering than the more empirical approach that preceded it.

During the period 1960–80, the CPI also made the transition from an industry based on innovation in which the profitability of a company depended to a large degree on developing new products and new processing approaches to a more mature commodity industry in which the financial success of a company depended on making their products using established technology more efficiently, resulting in less expensive products.

Globalization of the CPI markets began in the mid-1980s and led to increased competition. At the same time, development in computer hardware made it possible to apply process automation more easily and reliably than ever before. These automation projects provided improved product quality while increasing production rates and overall production efficiency with relatively little capital investment.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, new areas came on the scene that took advantage of the fundamental skills of chemical engineers, including the microelectronic industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the biomedical industry, and nanotechnology. Clearly, the analytical skills and the process training made chemical engineers ideal contributors to the development of the production operations for these industries. In the 1970s, more than 80% of graduating chemical engineers took jobs with the CPI and government. By 2000, that number had dropped to 50% due to increases in the number taking jobs with biotechnology companies, pharmaceutical/health care companies, and electronics and materials companies.

1.2 Types of Jobs Chemical Engineers Perform

Chemical engineers perform a wide range of jobs. Moreover, during your career, you are likely to have a number of different types of jobs. Following are the general types of jobs that chemical engineers perform:

• Operations: Operations engineers, or process engineers, are the first line of technical support for a processing plant. These engineers spend a lot of their time in the plant monitoring the operations and solving operational problems. When a serious technical problem occurs in the middle of the night, the operations engineer for that process is called in to resolve the problem. Many young chemical engineers start out as operations engineers for a few years so that they can become familiar with plant operations before they move to other assignments. This job also provides companies a view of how young engineers handle responsibility as well as how effectively they are able to work with others.
• Technical sales: Many products today are highly technical in nature and the consumer of these products often requires technical assistance to fully utilize them. Technical sales engineers provide that service as well as acquire new customers. Obviously, sales engineers need to be able to work effectively with their customers and to fully understand the technical issues associated with their company’s products in order to maintain customer satisfaction.
• Design: Design is developing something new that meets a defined need and is used to develop new products and services, many times using teams of engineers. Design is a challenging endeavor because there is no limit to how many new ways something can be designed. Therefore, design requires creativity and experience. As a result, design teams often are made up of members with a wide range of experience and training. It is the design team’s job to determine the best design for a product considering technical feasibility, economic viability, and the definition of the need for the end user.
• Consulting: Consulting companies specialize in specific areas of engineering—safety, design, control, and so on. When an operating company needs a consultant’s expertise, it simply contracts with the consulting company for the needed services. Because consulting companies provide technical services on an as-needed basis, the company that hires a consultant does not have to employ an expert in a particular field as a full-time employee. Consulting companies often hire engineers who have many years of engineering experience in specific technical areas. Individuals also serve as industrial consultants after years of experience in industry, academia, or government laboratories.
• Project management: Project management engineers are similar to operations engineers in that they are called upon to provide a number of technical services for the day-to-day operation of a project (e.g., an expansion project for a process or the construction of a new process). Initially, these engineers are required to develop estimates of labor and material for the project, and this information is then used to receive approval for the project. The project management engineer is responsible for coordinating the project or a portion of the project when the project is approved. Coordinating the project requires working with a number of parties, e.g., the management team, the construction team, the suppliers, and the operations department in order to deliver a high-quality project on time and on budget.
• Management: Corporate, operations, and technical: Many companies use chemical engineers for their corporate management because the position requires technical knowledge. Engineers who move into corporate management usually have training in business or have attended an MBA program. They normally work their way up the management ladder from technical management and operations management positions. Corporate management directs the business at the corporate level and deals with issues such as the corporate image, identifying new business opportunities, and deciding how to handle economic downturns, all in an effort to improve the overall profitability of the corporation. Operations management deals with the day-to-day problems and opportunities associated with operating an industrial production facility. Technical management is concerned with managing engineers who deal with operations, research, and development.
• Development: Development teams work with design teams to apply various designs so that they can be further tested. During this phase, the real-world consequences of potential designs become apparent, and the development team is charged with solving these problems when possible. For a new process, a pilot-scale process can be constructed, operated, and monitored to evaluate the performance of the new process (e.g., to determine the activity and yield of a catalyst). In effect, development teams are asked to demonstrate whether a design concept is viable.
• Research: Research is the scientific investigation of physical systems using laboratory experiments and/or computer simulations. Fundamental, or “blue-sky,” research studies the fundamental behavior of certain systems without regard to a specific industrial problem (e.g., studying the fundamental chemical reactions associated with a class of compounds). Industrial research is research aimed at solving an industrial problem (e.g., developing a new composite material that can be used in an industrial application). Whenever a technical issue has an important effect on society (e.g., developing green sources of energy), large amounts of government funding are usually offered to researchers, who explore and propose ways to solve these problems.
• University teaching: Engineering professors typically have a PhD in engineering or a related field and divide their work effort between research, teaching, and service to the profession. Their research effort is based on fundamental studies of engineering systems, while their teaching relies on being able to effectively communicate abstract material and practical approaches to students in a way that the students can assimilate and apply this information. Engineering professors are evaluated for promotion and advancement on the basis of publications in peer-reviewed journals, their ability to develop research funding, their effectiveness as a teacher, and their contribution to the engineering profession. Being an engineering professor is a demanding profession because of the breadth of work the individual must perform, but it can be a very rewarding career to help young people along the path to becoming successful engineers.