What a Chemical Engineer Does?

Well, according to Chemical Engineering Department of Pennsylvania State University, "Chemical Engineering is the science devoted to the manipulation of molecular matter and energy. Founded on a few core principles - the conservation of mass, momentum and energy - chemical engineering science is a hierarchy of subdisciplines (thermodynamics, kinetics, catalysis, mass, heat and momentum transfer, control) that is able to solve complex problems spanning multiple characteristic time and length scales - from hours and meters to picoseconds and tenths of nanometers. The focus of the discipline is on molecular transformations, whether they are done stoichiometrically, with synthetic catalysts, bioenzymmatically, in cells or even with whole organisms. The emphasis on chemistry and molecular biology as core enabling sciences differentiates chemical engineering science from the other engineering disciplines. However, chemical engineering science shares in common with the other engineering disciplines, the high level use of mathematics, both as an essential tool for analysis and model building and, even more importantly, as a language for the expression and exchange of well-posed problems and the definition of their solutions.

Wow...this statement scares the bejesus out of me!

There is only one thing I can sum up about Chemical Engineering - Ch E requires you to be a genius! Yeah, I really mean it. It asks no less than a genius to do well in this course and for the less mortals like me, we are just barely making ends meet.

I am almost close to the graduation. The date is set - December, 2004. But what have I learnt from this course?

Ah huh! Chemical Engineering especially for the last two semesters, taught me how to survive after a sleepless night doing PFD for CH E 401 or perhaps, doing the last minute presentation rehearsal for CH E 464 final corporate/technical presentation. It also teaches me how to learn a numerical software namely Mathematica which constitutes a bunch of programming-like syntaxs and at the same time modelling a dynamic control of a reactor system. Pretty cool eh? Learning, Creating, Brain-Cramming and Bullshitting - all in one time slot.

I also learnt that it is pertinent for anyone in this major to bust their head off in order to kick ass in Thermodynamic course aka CH E 303. Not to mention to sail through in CH E 414, it takes more blood than sweat. Believe it or not. For average Joe like me, this sounds too bizarre to accept.

Anyhow, what a Chemical Engineer does when he got through all the headaches, heartaches and stomachaches? Basically speaking, we are the kings of all engineering discipline. We rule in the land of engineering. We are the engineer behind the engineering of product. We deal a lot in processes, we deal a lot in crunching the numbers in order to make one line of production stable. A conventional wisdom always claims Chemical Engineers work mainly or only in petroleum industry. But it was years ago.

Now Chemical Engineers work almost in every sector you can ever imagine. We work a lot in food processing industries, pharmaceutical companies, electronic manufacturing factories. We designed the production scheme for the Intel's computer chip. We designed the process to produce Viagra's pill in mass. We also help to maintain reservoir's integrity. Oh yeah, not to forget that we also the main business consultant for Starbuck to build its empire across the globe before it was only a small coffee shop in Seattle about a decade ago. Pretty comprehensive, huh?!

And now, we are invading the biotechnology field. The transport phenomenon such as diffusion and fluid mechanism start to manifest their grip in biotechnology. And all these are studied by Chemical Engineers. But we don't do much though. So far, we only do research on the transportation in human blood, delivery design for drugs in human body and the control process of drug diffusion in blood stream, just to name a few.

I guess by now, people got a clear picture of what a Chemical Engineer does. And now tell your junior siblings if they really want to be a Chemical Engineer. And please, please and please tell this to anybody who is interested in becoming a Chemical Engineering; chemical engineering doesn't require you to have a strong background in chemistry, but it does want you to nail the math skill and be a good physicist as well. Chemistry only represents a miniscule amount of a real Ch E.