Date: 26/01/2015

Lecture No:07

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

1. Market research
2. Fundamental research
3. Exploratory research
4. Process research

Research
1.

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.

Research
2.

Fundamental research

In this research a new theory is developed and

tested experimentally Such research is concerned
with knowledge of

(a)

Principle of unit operations

Industrial reaction kinetics
Chemical process control

(b)
(c)

Research
3.

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.

Research
Process research
. Process researcher should be expert in math, physics,
chemistry and principles of chemical engineering.
4.

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

1.
2.
3.
4.

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

Process development
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.

1.

Process flow sheets showing different variety of equipments,

instrumentation control, operating variable e.g. temperature
pressure, flow rates etc.

2.

Mass balance of overall process and of individual units, showing

amount of inputs, yield of products and purity of all streams in
the process

Process design and evaluation

3.

Energy balance for all units in the process including heat exchanger
requirements

4.

Specification of pump capacities, pressure requirements and flow

rates.

5.

Specification of size of chemical reactors and storage tanks.

6.

Finding optimum operating condition for mass transfer operations

used for purification and separation of substances.

7.

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
1. Delivery of equipment
2. Material of construction
3. Man power requirements

Construction

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

1.

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 sale
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.
2.

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.
3.