Engineering in the Twentieth Century

A variety of horseless carriages had been devised by 1900, and by 1904, motor vehicles were being built in considerable numbers. Henry Ford contributed greatly to the development and popularity of automobiles by intro- 

In the early 1900s, engineers and scientists introduced several advances in the treatment of water and sewage, including [20)  

Rapid sand filters in reinforced concrete tanks were introduced in New Jersey. 

Karl Imhoff demonstrated a large-scale sludge settling and digestion tank 

Liquid chlorine was first used as a water disinfectant in Fort Meyer, firginia. 

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J. K. Smith, Developing a Discipline Chemical Engineering Research at Du Pont [39] Vance E. Senecal, Du Pont and Chemical Engineering in the Twentieth Century, pp. 283-301 in W. F. Furter, ed., History of Chemical Engineering [3]. 

Mack, Pamela E. 2001. What Difference Has Feminism Made to Engineering in the Twentieth Century. In Feminism in Twentieth-Century Science, Technology, and Medicine, Angela N. H. Creager, Elizabeth Lunbeck, and Londa L. Schiebingeg eds. Women in Culture and Society Series. Chicago University of Chicago Press, 149-68. 

As Midgley s health worsened, a cascade of awards rained down on him. To a dying man, they must have seemed bittersweet, like eulogies for the dead. In 1944, after 10 years as chairman of the board of the American Chemical Society, Midgley was also elected its president. No one else in the twentieth century, much less a mechanical engineer, has held both posts... 

Indeed, the boundaries that separated these traditional chemistry disciplines in the twentieth century (and chemistry, too, from other disciplines such as physics, biology and engineering) have been broken to create one large multidisciplinary community with a keen scientific... 

Another potentially explosive class of compounds is multiply bonded hydrocarbons. Early in the twentieth century chemical engineers learned by disastrous accidents that pure acetylene itself can detonate because the reaction... 

Dr Schramm holds 17 patents and has published 10 other books, and over 400 other scientific publications or proprietary reports. Many of his inventions have been adopted into commercial practice. He was awarded one of the first NSERC-Conference Board Synergy Awards for Best Practices in University-Industry R D Partnership, and his work on the development of oil-tolerant foams for enhanced oil recovery was judged to be a Milestone of Canadian Chemistry in the twentieth century by the Canadian Society for Chemistry. He has received other national awards for his work and is a Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada and an honourary Member of the Engineering Institute of Canada. 

Early in the twentieth century, cars powered by storage batteries were quite common. About 35% of all cars registered at that time in the United States were battery powered. They were more convenient than vehicles with ICEs that had to be cranked to start the engine. The situation took a turn when an electric starter was patented in 1912 and was then widely introduced. This meant the practically complete displacement of electric cars by today s traditional ICE vehicles. Today, battery-powered vehicles are used only for transport within production plants and for certain home deliveries, such as milk products and mail. 

Economic, political and social pressures have influenced the manufacture of ethanol since the fermentation process was introduced many years ago (see Chapter 1). In the nineteenth century its status as an industrial solvent was assured when industrial methylated spirit, which is ethanol denatured with methanol to make it unfit for human consumption, was freed from excise duty. In the twentieth century, the social and political pressures which provide economic support for agriculture have allowed fermentation to compete effectively with petrochemistry as a manufacturing process. The technical achievements in chemistry, biology and engineering have only facilitated the switch between carbohydrate and oil as feedstock for the process. 

In the twentieth century, 57 Nobel Prizes honored the chemical and physical results achieved by theoreticians and experimenters who can be rightly called nuclear scientists. This number alone proves that nuclear science was recognized as one of the most powerful engines pushing science to new heights in the past century, often referred to as the Nuclear Age. 

Qiemical and Petrochemical Industries. Distillation is one of the fundamental unit operations of chemical engineering and is an integral part of many chemical manufacturing processes. Modern industrial chemistry in the twentieth century was based on the numerous products obtainable from petrochemicals, especially when thermal and catalytic cracking is applied. Industrial distillations are performed in lai e, vertical distillation towers that are a common sight at chemical and petrochemical plants and petroleum refineries. These range from about 2 to 36 feet in diameter and 20 to 200 feet or more in height Chemical reaction and separation can be combined in a process called reactive distillation, where the removal of a volatile product is used to shift the equilibrium toward completion. 

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