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Chemical engineering?? what is it?? please help me out??

Hi guys i was wondering could you tell me a summary of what chemical engineers do in the real world??
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Original post by mathsaddictive21
Hi guys i was wondering could you tell me a summary of what chemical engineers do in the real world??


There is no universal definition of what a chemical engineer will or will not do as a career path. Many chemical engineering graduates don't get jobs that will resemble anything like what they learnt on their degree.

I will try and sum up what a chemical engineer might do with this example:

A chemist in the research and development department of a company realises mixing two reagents under a given temperature/pressure/solvent will create a product meeting a company's demand criteria, and suggest scaling up the reaction for larger-scale manufacturing.

The problem now becomes an engineering problem:
A chemical engineer will determine: the type/size of reactor to use, the separation methods necessary to refine the product to the required purity, the safety implications of increasing scale of manufacture, the optimal method of controlling the reaction, the energy demand for pumps/compressors/methods of moving the reagants through the pipework, and the capital cost and operating profitability of the process.

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