Chemical Engineering World

Chemical engineering as a discipline is a little over one hundred years old. It grew out of mechanical engineering in the last part of the 19th century, because of a need for chemical processors. Before the Industrial Revolution (18th century), industrial chemicals were mainly produced through batch processing. Batch processing is similar to cooking. Individuals mix ingredients in a vessel, heat or pressurize the mixture, test it, and purify it to get a saleable product. Batch processes are still performed today on expensive products, such as perfumes, or pure maple syrups, where one can still turn a profit, despite batch methods being slow and inefficient. Most chemicals today are produced through a continuous "assembly line" chemical process. The Industrial Revolution was when this shift from batch to continuous processing occurred.

The Industrial Revolution led to an unprecedented escalation in demand, both with regard to quantity and quality, for bulk chemicals such as sulfuric acid and soda ash. This meant two things: one, the size of the activity and the efficiency of operation had to be enlarged, and two, serious alternatives to batch processing, such as continuous operation, had to be examined. This created the need for an engineer who was not only conversant with how machines behaved, but also understood chemical reactions and transport phenomena (how substances came together to react, how the required conditions could be achieved, etc.), and the influence the equipment had on how these processes operated on the large scale. Thus, Chemical Engineering was born as a distinct discipline; distinct from both Mechanical Engineering on one hand and industrial chemistry on the other.

Here are some highlights from the early history of chemical engineering :

• 1959: John Glover, who designed the first mass-transfer tower, is often considered to be the first Chemical Engineer. At this time, nitrate was commonly used in reactions. Chile was the only available source for nitrate, and therefore it was very expensive to import into Britain. John Glover's tower absorbed extra nitrate, which was instead being burned off, and recycled it. This "Glover Tower" became a standard among chemical plants in Britain at that time.

• 1880: George Davis, a Britain, founded the Society for Chemical Engineers, which failed.

• 1887: George Davis presented a series of 12 lectures on Chemical Engineering at Manchester Technical School. His information was criticized for being common, everyday English know-how, since it was designed around operating practices used by British chemical industries. At this time, however, in the United States, this information helped jump-start "new" ideas in the Chemical Industry, as well as spark Chemical Engineering programs at several universities.

• 1888: The first Chemical Engineering curriculum ever began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This four year BS program, designed by Lewis Norton, combined Mechanical Engineering and industrial chemistry in order to fulfill the rising needs of the Chemical Industry.

• 1892: University of Pennsylvania also developed a Chemical Engineering program.

• 1894: Tulane University became the first southern school, and also the third American school, to offer a program in Chemical Engineering.

• 1901-1904: George Davis wrote a "Handbook of Chemical Engineering," which had over 1000 pages about unit operations, now considered to be part of the base of all modern-day Chemical Engineering.

• 1915: Arthur D Little recognized that filtration, heat exchange, distillation, and other assorted processes which were used in different industries were the same. This idea was called "Unit Operations," and later lead to the integrated curriculum of today. He stressed the idea of Unit Operations to distinguish Chemical Engineering from other science and engineering disciplines. Chemical Engineers were the first to deal with the products instead of the mechanical process, and also to study the entire underlying process instead of just one reaction. Unit Operations were the tool showing the uniqueness and worth of Chemical Engineers to American chemical manufacturers.