Unit 3 Typical Activities of Chemical Engineers-1

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Unit 3 Typical Activities of Chemical Engineers
The classical role of the chemical engineer is to take the discoveries made by the chemist in the laboratory and develop them into money--making, commercial-scale chemical processes. The chemist works in test tubes and Parr bombs with very small quantities of reactants and products (e.g., 100 ml), usually running “batch”, constant-temperature experiments. Reactants are placed in a small container in a constant temperature bath. A catalyst is added and the reactions proceed with time. Samples are taken at appropriate intervals to follow the consumption of the reactants and the production of products as time progresses.

By contrast, the chemical engineer typically works with much larger quantities of material and with very large (and expensive) equipment. Reactors can hold 1,000 gallons to 10,000 gallons or more. Distillation columns can be over 100 feet high and 10 to 30 feet in diameter. The capital investment for one process unit in a chemical plant may exceed $100 million!

The chemical engineer is often involved in “scaling up” a chemist-developed small-scale reactor and separation system to a very large commercial plant. The chemical engineer must work closely with the chemist in order to understand thoroughly the chemistry involved in the process and to make sure that the chemist gets the reaction kinetic data and the physical property data needed to design, operate, and optimize the process. This is why the chemical engineering curriculum contains so many chemistry courses.
The chemical engineer must also work closely with mechanical, electrical, civil, and metallurgical engineers in order to design and operate the physical equipment in a plant--the reactors, tanks, distillation columns, heat exchangers, pumps, compressors, Control and instrumentation devices, and so on. One big item that is always on such an equipment list is piping. One of the most impressive features f a typical chemical plant is the tremendous number of pipes running all over the site, literally hundreds of miles in many plants. These pipes transfer process materials (gases and liquids) into and out of the plant. They also carry utilities (steam, cooling water, air, nitrogen, and refrigerant) to the process units.

To commercialize the laboratory chemistry, the chemical engineer is involved in development, design, construction, operation, sales, and research. The terminology used to label these functions is by no means uniform from company to company, but a rose by any other name is still a rose. Let us describe each of these functions briefly. It should be emphasized that the jobs we shall discuss are “typical” and “classical”, but are by no means the only things that chemical engineers do. The chemical engineer has a broad background in mathematics, chemistry, and physics. Therefore, he or she can, and does, fill a rich variety of jobs in industry, government, and academia.