Other Branches of Engineering

Metallurgical engineering, which is concerned with the prodnction of metals from ores and the development of metallic alloys. 

Mining engineering, which encompasses the exploration, location, development, and operation of mines for extracting coal, metallic ores snch as copper and zinc, and other minerals. 

Plastics engineering, which involves the formulation, mannfactnre, and applications of materials (e.g., polymers) that permanently deform nnder stress. 

Ceramic engineering, which deals with products manufactured or used at high temperatures (above 1000°F) and the physical and chemical processes used in their mannfactnre. 

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Chemical engineers of the future will be integrating a wider range of scales than at r other branch of engineering. For example, some may work to relate the macroscale of the environment to the mesoscale of combustion systems and the microscale of molecular reactions and transport (see Chapter 7). Others may work to relate the macroscale performance of a composite aircraft to the mesoscale chemical reactor in which the wing was formed, the design of the reactor perhaps having been influenced by studies of the microscale dynamics of complex liquids (see Chapter 5). 

Modeling and analysis of chemical reactors is at the core of the chemical engineering discipline. It is one activity that is unique to our discipline and distinguishes it from other branches of engineering. One fundamental difference between the modeling of chemical reactors and non-reacting systems is that the... 

Nevertheless, analysis has services to offer that must not be overlooked if the progress of the last few years is to be maintained. As in other branches of engineering, the pace of development demands that wherever possible calculation should take the place of experimentation in the endeavor to shorten the road between the decision to make a certain chemical and its final production. Indeed, there are several stages along this road where the feasibility of the whole... 

This section is a general discussion of the design process. The subject of this book is chemical engineering design, but the methodology described in this section applies equally to other branches of engineering. 

Chemical process control is a subject of study with its own intricacies and challenges. It is intimately related to chemical engineering science and practice, and as such it is not the degenerate child of any other branch of engineering. 

Instruction in mathematics physics, and other branches of engineering was excellent, but there was no integration between chemistry and engineering,. .. A required course in surveying served no purpose in chemical engineering (24),... 

Unfortunately, the books on other branches of engineering are often difficult to understand as we lack the specialized knowledge that the authors take for granted. Nicholas Bahr writes with such readers in mind. Even if you do not work in the process industry you can learn from this book how process safety experts identify and assess hazards. Their techniques may be useful elsewhere or they may suggest ways you can improve your own techniques. Similarly, process engineers can learn from others. 

Chemical engineers normally work with the universal gas constant R. Several other branches of engineering use separate values of R for each gas. These are defined by individual = universa/ > so that, for example,... 

Nanotechnology is the branch of engineering that deals with the manipulation of individual atoms, molecules, and systems smaller than 100 nanometers. Two different methods are envisioned for nanotechnology to buUd nanostructured systems, components, and materials. One method is the top-down approach and the other method is called the bottom-up approach. In the top-down approach the idea is to miniaturize the macroscopic structures, components, and systems toward a nanoscale of the same. In the bottom-up approach the atoms and molecules constituting the building blocks are the starting point to build the desired nanostmcture [96-98]. 

To solve the problems of representation and control, we will employ the framework of the branch-and-bound algorithm, which has been used to solve many types of combinatorial optimization problems, in chemical engineering, other domains of engineering, and a broad range of management problems. Specifically, we will use the framework proposed by Ibaraki (1978), which is characterized by the following features ... 

That essence (so far as I can tell) is the conception or synthesis, the design, testing, scale-up, operation, control, and optimization of commercial processes that change the state, microstructure, and, most typically, the chemical composition of materials, by physicochemical separations and above all by chemical reactions. What distinguishes chemical engineering from the other major branches of engineering is the centrality of physicochemical... 

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