The field of engineering technology which comprises of collection of raw materials from natural resources and converting them into useful finished products via a systematic scientific method is known as chemical engineering.
Any venture of science may that be in laboratory or in the industry has to start and end with materials and chemicals and throughout the entire process from feed to the final product from chemical reactions to the machines involved are all designed in chemical engineering.
This design of operations has been successfully put together by combining the knowhow of physical sciences like physics and chemistry and the life sciences such as biochemistry and microbiology.
In the industry at each process control right from the input of the feed, the flow of reactions to the final refining of materials, chemical engineering is required everywhere. Clearly if one carefully studies the processes, there will be no doubt that chemical engineering has emerged to be the skeleton of scientific and industrial technology.
Chemical Engineering and the chemical industry
A chemical plant comprises of industrial scale production of finished goods, as well as reusing and recycling of used products from the market, any variety of operations may be conducted the unit operations used in the process is made by chemical engineers using the knowledge of chemical engineering. In the plant everything from the very building of the bioreactors, storage units, processing columns to the final refining and packaging operations, all assets are built on the concept of chemical engineering.
The chemical industry is spread over a wide area of fields, petrochemical plants, petroleum refining plants, alcohol production plants, mineral processing industry, pharmaceuticals etc. because all of these sectors use the knowledge of chemistry along with technology to build the plants and execute the operations.
The chemical engineering department has to take special care when dealing with industries that are sensitive such as the pharmaceutical industry because its finished products, the medicines are consumed by living beings. Any blunder in these operations may lead to fatal conditions.
So the chemical engineering department is very cautious about the designing, construction, installation and supervision of the operations of the plants and equipments in these kinds of sectors. In short, chemical engineering is the structural and the functional unit of the chemical industry.
Problems ahead in Chemical Engineering
Ever increasing demand of better products throughout the world is seeing industrial expansion of global standards. Nature being a limited source, there is a need to design synthetic replacements for those natural raw materials whose supply chain is diminishing.
Chemical engineering aims to solve these problems by designing efficient ways to use materials.