What do chemical engineers do?

lapagan
Sun, 10 Apr 2011 11:01:37 +0000

LastThreeYears, in many of the industries that I mentioned below they have their Engineering Division. In there you can do fundamental process design all the way to equipment design/spec. For example in the chemical company that I work for, in most cases you work with Chemists that are trying to scale up their bench processes. Normal process is for the people in Engineering to design a pilot plant process to determine the best way to scale up this work and produce developmental quantities to be further tested. Then again you go to your Eng. Div and if the project is approved to move forward they prepare a basic engineering package for the new plant. In this you get all engineering majors working together, most likely a Chem Eng leads the project. Then you move to a final engineering package that is modeled using computer programs like Aspen. Lastly, capital expense is approved and construction starts, here the Mechanical and Chemical Engineers usually get a lead role.

In this that it is matter of finding the right company and right job that matches your interest. Of course taken from your interest if you are attracted to fundamental engineering design then a PHD in Chemical Engineering will by design take you that area.

Like I mentioned before the beauty of Chemical Eng is that you don’t get put in a box. You can apply your knowledge in any field you are interest in.

I suggest that during you undergraduate you get involved in research and do a summer REU program. There are thousand of those available across the country.