Actual Objectives for Chemical Engineering Research

In the past, the scope of chemical engineering research ranged from process engineering to product engineering. It was firstly defined as the capacity to produce one chemical product with complex designed properties. It was occasioned by the necessity to produce one profound transformation of the existing chemical production systems. The objective then was to produce the state displacement in the vicinity of its thermodynamic efficiency [1.19, 1.20]. Many theoreticians and practitioners accept that if the researcher wants to obey all the statements described above, changes in many of the classical research procedures are required [1.21, 1.22]. 

Trying to discover the basic concepts that will be the keys to successful applications in the future, more and more scientists consider that the chemical engineering design and research must meet five major objectives [1.23-1.26]  

The first objective is represented by the need to increase the productivity and selectivity of both existing and new processes through intelligent operations and multiscale control of processes. This objective is sustained by the important results obtained thanks to the synthesis of a new class of engineered porous supports and catalysts. So the catalytic reactions and separation processes that use these materials can be efficiently controlled. 

Microtechnology makes it possible to produce these materials in series. Other materials with a controlled structure begin to be developed for chiral technologies. 

Such approaches imply that chemical engineers should go down to the nanoscale to control events at the molecular level. At this level, manipulating supramolecular building blocks can create new functions in interacting species such as self-organization, regulation, replication and communication. Consequently a new mathematical characterisation must be produced and used to describe these discrete functions. 

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