What Is Chemical Engineer

Q: I have a report due which asks what is a Chemical Engineer. Please help

A: I've been told that a chemical engineer is someone who knows some chemistry, but isn't a chemist, knows a little math, but isn't a mathematician, knows about physics, but is not a physicist, and likes to solve problems. It isn't too far from the truth. Generally we know enough in any field to follow an expert, but not necessarily enough to synthesize much new knowledge in the field. This said, there have been a lot of major advances made by engineers in each of these fields. Often times the engineers are the ones who see the entire process, not just some little tiny aspect of it. Chemical engineering is the most statistical of the major branches of engineering. It originated in industrial chemisty. We deal with designing, using, and controlling various unit operations (equipment). We work with chemists (sometimes) to determine how various chemical reactions take place, and then use that information to design the proper large scale equipment to make it in an industrial setting. This means that we worry about heat flows, fluid flows, mixing, and liquid storage. We are pretty heavily into thermodynamics, which is the mathematics of heat in all its forms, and how it relates to physical and chemical properties of substances materials. An example of this would be to determine the equilibrium concentration of all the products of a particular reaction. A typical chemical engineer might be watching over a plant, possibly managing it. The plant might produce petroleum products, plastics, paper, foodstuffs, cement, etc. He or she might instead be into research, looking into the fundamentals of a particular field. Some others worry about process control, or process measurement. Some people use the field to springboard into management. The half life of an engineer is about 5 years, so they tell me. After that, many of us end up in management or doing something else.

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