Chemical Engineering as a Career!

Last May, chemical engineering seniors at a large university took their last final examination, attended their graduation ceremonies, flipped their tassels and threw their mortarboards in the air, enjoyed their farewell parties, said goodbye to one another and promised faithfully to stay in touch, and headed off in an impressive variety of geographical and career directions.

You all must be probably thinking about following in the footsteps of those graduates – spending the next few years learning to be a chemical
engineer and possibly the next 40 applying what you learn in a career. Even so, it is a fairly safe bet that, like most of the people in your position, you have only a limited idea of what chemical engineering is or what chemical engineers do.

Unfortunately, no universally accepted definition of chemical engineering exists, and almost every type of skilled work you can think of is done somewhere by people educated as chemical engineers.

CAREER THAT CHEMICAL ENGINEERS PURSUE

Consider these examples and see if any of them sound like the sort of career you can see yourself pursuing and enjoying.

Manufacturing firms

About 45% of the class went to work for a large chemical, petrochemical, pulp and paper, plastics and other materials, or textile manufacturing firms.

Designing & Consulting Firms

Another 35% went to work for government agencies and design and consulting firms (many specializing in environmental regulation and pollution control) and for companies in fields such as microelectronics and biotechnology that have traditionally been associated with chemical engineering.

Advanced degree- Masters or Ph.D.

About 10% of the class went directly into graduate school in chemical engineering. The master’s degree candidates will get advanced education in traditional chemical engineering areas( thermodynamics, chemical reactor analysis and design, fluid dynamics, mass and heat transfer, and chemical process design and control), and in about two years most of them will graduate and get jobs doing process or control systems design or product development. The doctoral degree candidates will get advanced education and work on major research projects, and in four to five years most will graduate and either go into industrial research and development or join a university faculty.

Joining a Graduate School

The remaining 10% of the class went into graduate school in an area other than chemical engineering, such as medicine, law, and business.

Pharmaceuticals, Paints, Cosmetics and other product manufacturing Companies

Several graduates went to work for companies manufacturing specialty chemicals- pharmaceuticals, paint and dyes, and cosmetics, among many other products. All of the companies used to hire only chemists to design and run their production processes, but in the past few decades they discovered that if they wanted to remain competitive they would have to pay attention to such things as mixing efficiency, heat transfer, automatic temperature and liquid level control, statistical quality control, and control of pollutant emissions. They also discovered that those are areas in which chemical engineers are educated and chemists are not, at which point these industries became an increasingly important job market for chemical engineers.

Semiconductor circuits manufacturing companies

Some went to work for companies that manufacture integrated semiconductor circuits. A critical step in the production of (for example) computer chips involves coating small silicon wafers with extremely thin and uniform layers of silicon- containing semiconducting materials. The technique used for this process is chemical vapor deposition, in which the coating material is formed in a gas- phase reaction and then deposited on the surface of the wafer. The graduates working in this area may be called on to identify reactions that can be used to produce the desired films, determine the best conditions at which to run the reactions, design the reactors, and continue to improve their operation.

Biotechnology firms

Some took elective courses in biochemistry and microbiology and got jobs with small but rapidly growing biotechnology firms. One graduate works in the design of pharmaceutical production processes that involve immobilized enzymes, biological chemicals that can make specific reactions go orders of magnitude faster than they would on the absence of the enzymes. Several others work on processes that involve genetic engineering, in which recombinant DNA is synthesized and used to produce valuable proteins and other medicinal and agricultural chemicals that would be hard to obtain by any other means.

Plastics/ Polymers companies

Some joined companies that manufacture polymers (plastics). One is working on the development of membranes for desalination of seawater (fresh water passes through, salt is kept out) and for gas separations (hydrogen passes through and hydrocarbons are kept out and or vice versa); another is developing membranes to be used in hollow tube artificial kidneys (blood flows the patient’s body through thin-walled tubes; metabolic wastes in the blood pass through the tube walls but proteins and other important body chemicals remain in the blood is returned to the body).

Management Side

Four of the graduates went to medical school. (Chemical engineering graduates who take several electives in the biological sciences have a strong record of success in gaining medical school admission.) One went to law school. Three enrolled in Master of Business Administration programs and after graduation will probably move into management tracks in chemical related industries.

Environmental

One graduate joined the Peace Corps for a two-year stint in east Africa helping local communities to develop sanitary waste disposal systems and also teaching science and English in a rural school. When she returns, she will complete her Ph.D. program, join a chemical engineering faculty, write a definitive book on environmental applications of chemical engineering principles, quickly rise through the ranks to become a full professor, resign after ten and highly successful private foundation dedicated to improving education in economically deprived communities. She will attribute her career successes to the problem-solving skills she acquired in her undergraduate training in chemical engineering.

Laboratory Research- Chemical, biochemical, biomedical or Material Science domains

At various points in their careers, some of the graduates will work in chemical or biochemical or biomedical or material science laboratories doing research and development  or quality engineering, at computer terminals designing processes and products and control systems, at field locations managing the construction and startup of manufacturing plants, on production floors supervising and troubleshooting and improving operations, on the road doing technical sales and service, in executive offices performing administrative functions, in government agencies responsible for environmental and occupation health and safety, in hospitals and clinics practicing medicine or biomedical engineering, in law offices specializing in chemical process-related patent work, and in classroom teaching the next generation of chemical engineering students.

Even the chemical engineering graduates who go into a traditional chemical manufacturing process end up performing a wide variety of different tasks. Consider the following example, and see if any of the problems described seem to present the sort of challenge you can see yourself taking on and enjoying.

Reference:  Took from the book of Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes by Richard M. Felder & Ronald W. Rousseau.

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