Professional Field Within Chemical Engineering
Professional Field Within Chemical Engineering
Chemical engineering is such a vast and complex field that one can not be expert in whole of the field. Chemical engineer can work in major fields within chemical engineering. These fields are;
- Research Process
- Development Process
- Design And Evaluation
- Plant Design
- Construction
- Production Supervision
- Plant Technical Service
- Product Sale
Research
Research means to introduce something new or to get knowledge and improvement on something well established. There are four basic types of researchers
- Market research
- Fundamental research
- Exploratory research
- Process research
- Market research
Before investing in any project a market research is first conducted to calculate which product in demand these days and out of them which are more profitable to manufacturer.
- Fundamental research
In this research a new theory is developed and tested experimentally Such research is concerned with knowledge of
Principle of unit operations
Industrial reaction kinetics
Chemical process control
- Exploratory research
It is conducted for finding a particular reaction having commercial possibilities and is safe from any danger explosion etc. It is conducted on laboratory scale.
- Process research
Process researcher should be expert in math, physics, chemistry and principles of chemical engineering.
Determines operating conditions for commercially feasible process
Yield data for preliminary economic evaluation
Provides information for designing of pilot plant
Process variable are studied deeply to get optimum conditions
Process development
In this process research ideas are developed for particular process.
In this study a small scale plant i.e. pilot plant is constructed with identical equipment that is to be used in a full scale plant.
The error we get from pilot plant are eliminated.
Process development consist of four steps
- Planning the development of program
- Designing and building of pilot plant
- Operation of pilot plant
- Correction, presentation and evaluation of data from pilot plant
The process development engineer,
- Supervise the pilot plant
- Specify operating conditions
- Analyze resulting data
- Evaluate data and present it in a form that is useful to design engineer.
Process design and evaluation
In designing, overall process is designed by checking the process with replaceable process steps to ensure economic plant.
Process design and evaluation includes following steps.
- Process flow sheets showing different variety of equipments, instrumentation control, operating variable e.g. temperature pressure, flow rates etc.
- Mass balance of overall process and of individual units, showing amount of inputs, yield of products and purity of all streams in the process
- Energy balance for all units in the process including heat exchanger requirements Specification of pump capacities, pressure requirements and flow rates.
- Specification of size of chemical reactors and storage tanks.
- Finding optimum operating condition for mass transfer operations used for purification and separation of substances.
- Economic evaluation with estimate of capital investment and operating cost
Plant design
In the plant design we translate the results of process design into complete specifications and plans which will be used by constructors to build the plant.
Plant design group thoroughly studies the process design and by considering few changes make it more economical such as supply of water as well as waste disposal and safety factors.
Construction
Role of chemical engineer in construction is very little. His job is to construct the plant in shortest possible time and within the allotted budget.
He must schedule
- Delivery of equipment
- Material of construction
- Man power requirements
He must have good labor relations. After completion he check that equipments meet the given specification.
He is available at the plant start up after construction.
Production supervision
Job of production supervision is to get new plant running.
He check daily record and note it.
He adjust process product quality by removing contamination (pollution) and reducing deterioration (worse quality), and to eliminate product defects.
He reduces steam, power, water consumption by careful operating, he reduces labor cost by good labor relations.
Plant technical service
When any problem occur in operation of equipment, this group moves in and analyze the problem and suggest a solution for it.
If there is a breakdown in the process this group is called to determine it and eliminate the problems.
Product sale
Product sale can be divided into three areas
- Market research
As soon as exploratory research give promising results, the market research is conducted. This group contact potential users and determine their needs.
- Product development
Product development group find new uses of established product and new product for latest consumer needs. It suggests an attractive name for the products.
- Technical customer service
The two areas are inter related, they have to sell the product on technical superiority and to report any problem faced by customer to product development group.
What is Engineering? what is Chemical Engineering?
simultaneous heat and mass transfer
Seperation Process - Condensation
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