The Origins of Chemical Engineering

Chemical engineering, like every other new discipline, also encountered discord as to its name terms like industrial chemistry or chemical technology were widely used and this in turn led to serious objections from existing bodies when the need 

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F.J. Van Antwerpen (1980), "The origins of chemical engineering", in History of Chemical Engineering, W.F. Furter editor. Advances in Chemistry Series 190, ACS... 

PPDS (Physical Property Data Service) was originally developed in the United Kingdom by the Institution of Chemical Engineers and the National Physical Laboratory. It is now available as a Microsoft Windows version from NEL, a division of the TUV Sudde-untschland Group (www.nel.uk). PPDS is made available to universities at a discount. 

The formal origin of chemical engineering as a discipline is considered to date to 18S8 when it was introduced as an option in the chemistry department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology... 

Despite its present stage of relative infancy, the history of chemical engineering already harbors a number of important themes. One of them is that chemical engineering, as this word is now used in the United States and a number of other countries, refers to a disciplinary and professional structure which saw its original cognitive foundations based on a new notion - that of unit operations. This point has been developed elsewhere (1) but it will be useful to summarize some of the main elements of this story to provide a suitable backdrop for the present paper. 

The processing of cmde oil into gasoline, other fuels, and chemicals has always been the bread-and-butter employer of chemical engineers. The discipline of chemical engineering had its origins in producing fuels and chemicals, and these tasks remain the dominant topic of the chemical engineer. 

The present review of the literature on film flow was carried out in its original form at the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, England. The writer would like to express his gratitude to the Department of Chemical... 

I he discipline of chemical engineering evolved fiom chemistry. Most university departments of chemical engineering are spin-ofiEs from prior chemistry departments. This is true for most schools, but not all. This chapter treats the beginnings of chemical engineering in the universities of the United States. In particular it shows that some departments originated in strange and unusual ways. 

Almost two decades after the start of mechanical engineering at Colorado, a similar origin took place at the University of Rochester (29). The union of chemical engineering with mechanical engineering (combined for a time also with chemistry and later electrical engineering) continued until 1959. Today at Rochester the Department of Chemical Engineering is independent. 

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