Chemical engineering, profession

The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) has a 30-year history of involvement with process safety for chemical processing plants. Through its strong ties with process designers, builders, operators, safety professionals and academia, the AIChE has enhanced communication and fostered improvement in the high safety standards of the industry. AIChE publications and symposia have become an information resource for the chemical engineering profession on the causes of accidents and means of prevention. 

The four most cited accidents (Flixborough, England Bhopal, India Seveso, Italy and Pasadena, Texas) are presented here. All these accidents had a significant impact on public perceptions and the chemical engineering profession that added new emphasis and standards in the practice of safety. Chapter 13 presents case histories in considerably more detail. 

A second point can be made about the way in which uni" processes came into existence. The emergence of unit process is analogous to that of unit operations, particularly with regard to relevant social groupings involved in this evolution. Industries, professional organizations, particularly AIChE and the American Chemical Society, and universities are involved, as in the case of unit operations. This time, however, the process leading to the identification of unit processes is simpler because the disciplinary identity of the chemical engineering profession is well defined and especially because unit processes, as the name shows, are patterned after unit operations. 

Chemical engineering is a dynamic profession, and its literature continues to evolve. McGraw-Hill and its consulting editors remain committed to a publishing policy that will serve, and indeed lead, the needs of the chemical engineering profession during the years to come. 

Even more than the petroleum industry, the petrochemical industry defmes the chemical engineering profession. The evolution of this industry has produced the changes in the country s needs for engineers and continues to evolve and employ most chemical engineers. The raw materials used in chemical synthesis have made the transitions... 

Along with these topics, we attempt a brief historical srrrvey of chemical technology fi om the start of the Industrial Revolution through speculations on what will be important in the twenty-first century. The rise of the major petroleum and chemical companies has created the chemical engineering profession, and their current downsizing creates significant issues for our students future careers. 

The AIChE was founded in 1908. The AIChE represents over 50,000 chemical engineers in industry, academia, and government. The organization provides leadership in the chemical engineering profession and offers several major meetings a year, publishes several specific journals and more. Visit the AIChE s website for a complete picture of its current activities. 

Between the wars, the growing numbers of continuous catalytic processes—in other manufactures as well as petroleum refining and petrochemicals—absorbed more and more chemical engineers. They brought incentives to focus as much on selective reactions of flowing fluids and suspensions as on the separations and particulate solids-processing methods that constituted the unit operations. They also became nuclei of all sorts of opportunities for the chemical engineering profession. 

Arthur Humphrey If you lump all of the B.S. students who go into medicine, veterinary science, and dental science, and add all of those going into the health care, pharmaceutical, food, and agricultural-based industries, you get up to almost 25% of the chemical engineering profession. You have to define food and agriculture on a very broad base. My own concept is that this field is probably going to utilize 25 to 30% of the chemical engineers when it reaches an equilibrium. 

My subject today concerns change, in particular, the changes that the chemical engineering profession is experiencing today and is likely to experience more intensely tomorrow. To say that chemical engineering is in a state of transition is certainly not new it s always been that way. But what is the nature of this transition as we enter the twenty-first century I would like to share with you some thoughts toward an attempt—at least in part—to answer that question. 

A sustained and steadily intensified need exists in the chemical engineering profession for authoritative and comprehensive reviews of the current status of the surging tide of research. To meet this need, an increased frequency of publication of Advances is foreseen, probably an annual schedule. While many of the reviews presented in this and earlier volumes are invited contributions, the Editors will be (and have been) most receptive to suggestions regarding appropriate topics and authors, and to independent proposals to prepare a review of the desired type. 

Rehm, T. R., A Guide for the Implementation of the International System of Units by the Chemical Engineering Profession, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, New York, 1979. 

The chemical engineering profession needs to develop a strategic framework that fits with the current world in which we operate — flexible, proactive, engaging, communicating. Sustainability is a new concept for a new century. The elements of sustainability are more like the network (multi-faceted interactions) than the hub-and-spoke . Sustainability offers a framework for proactive interaction with the community by the chemical engineering profession. This chapter seeks to explore this concept and to outline what such a framework might look like. 

In the work we do, it is vital to always consider the outcomes and implications. Sustainability is all about this, and, as such, makes a good framework for our interaction with the community. Before considering a new framework, it is necessary to look at the current modes of interactions between the chemical engineering profession and the community. 

There is a need for the chemical engineering profession to work with the community, rather than leave it to the government and regulatory bodies to dictate the level and extent of accountabilities. A united approach between the profession and the community is more effective. Whatever the dimensions of regulation and selfregulation, interdependence of chemical engineers with the wider community must be recognised. That interdependence is not power-based but rather one that attempts to satisfy mutual needs. 

What was once voluntary is becoming the forced position (see Fig. 3). For the chemical engineering profession, the components of technical content, regulation and stakeholders interaction have all expanded and overlap to a greater extent than in the past. 

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