Chemical Engineering

What is Chemical Engineering?

The sphere of engineering technology that deals with the process of conversion of raw materials or chemicals obtained from natural or artificial resources into more useful or valuable forms is known as chemical engineering.

The field of chemical engineering uses the applications of physical sciences such as chemistry and physics and also life sciences such as microbiology and biochemistry to achieve its goals.

Any scientific project or industrial advancement requires chemical engineering at its foundation stone because anything and everything has to be made with chemicals and materials and hand in hand with them comes chemical engineering.

Starting from the design and planning to processing and maintenance up till the end Chemical Engineering is required in each step. It has undoubtedly become the blueprint of modern day scientific technology and industrial engineering.

Chemical Engineering in Industry

In the industrial sector chemical engineering involves everything from the making, maintenance to modification (improvement) of the processes and assets of the plant.

A typical chemical plant may involve the production of large scale manufacturing from raw materials to recycling of waste materials from used products, whatever the feed and the output may be the unit operations is designed by chemical engineers.

The chemical engineering industry, using the knowledge of chemistry and technology cover a wide area of sectors such as mineral processing industry, petrochemical plants, pharmaceuticals, synthetic fibers, petroleum refining plants, alcohol production plants etc.

Especially in the pharmaceutical industry and other sectors such as food industry where final product is consumed by living beings quality is of utmost importance.

The chemical engineering department is dubbed with the responsibility of designing, supervision, construction, installation and operation of plants and equipments for manufacturing chemical products and developing new methods of production. In short chemical engineering is the skeleton of the industrial sector.

Modern Day Challenges of Chemical Engineering

The constantly growing market fed by the ever increasing demand of better products is leading to what we can call “global industrial expansion.”
However, Mother Nature is a limited resource and the continuing scarcity of raw materials and tapering supply chain, not to mention the uphill increment of production costs is making a lot of the conventional chemical engineering processes obsolete.

There is a need to design synthetic replacements for those natural resources that are in short supply.

This is where chemical engineering becomes very important as through this discipline we can develop economic ways of using materials and energy.