chemical engineering: a series of questions

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>Hello there,</p>

<p>Im a prospective chemical engineer, however, it's a subject that i know very little about. I want to see if it is really right for me. I have some questions to ask the audience. </p>

<p>How difficult are the undergraduate chemical engineering courses? Are they mathematical intensive (using multivariate calculus?) ? </p>

<p>What are some typical problems that a chemical engineering student would have to figure out in class? </p>

<p>How do chemical engineering courses differ from chemistry courses? </p>

<p>What types of problems are chemical engineers faced with? </p>

<p>How is the work-environment?</p>

<p>thanks</p>

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<p>How difficult are the undergraduate chemical engineering courses? Are they mathematical intensive (using multivariate calculus?) ?</p>

<p>Relatively difficult. Many students in large state colleges drop out. Grad rate is about 50-60%. The highest math you will ever do is differential equations, and you will just be following recipes. The math is very basic, and nothing as hard as what a math major will experience. Workload and complacency is what screw people over, not difficulty of material.</p>

<p>What are some typical problems that a chemical engineering student would have to figure out in class?</p>

<p>Material balances - x lbs of crap going in yields y amount of treasure going out.
Fluid mech - what is the pipe diameter to yield flow rate x and pressure drop y.
Thermo - Find Gibbs free energy change for NPT system undergoing some process.
Kinetics - find rate law, order, reaction yield</p>

<p>How do chemical engineering courses differ from chemistry courses?</p>

<p>ChemE courses mostly stress application, and you will be solving thermophysics problems involving not so sexy heat exchangers, distillation columns, etc that mainly focus on physics and optimization, while Chem classes will involve more sexier topics like quantum orbitals, metal complexes, protein folding, NMR, fluorescence, biochemical pathways, etc.</p>

<p>What types of problems are chemical engineers faced with?</p>

<p>Find conditions to increase reaction yield, reduce costs, eliminate waste, maintain equipment operations.</p>

<p>How is the work-environment?</p>

<p>You will be working in a plant, and probably alternating between the office and shop floors. Your boss does not care if you understand the chemistry and physics behind the chemical process, but only if you know how to use ASPEN and COMSOL...sad but true.</p>

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<p>
[quote]

How difficult are the undergraduate chemical engineering courses? Are they mathematical intensive (using multivariate calculus?) ?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>At the beginning, it's math-light, but as you progress, the math becomes more intensive. In your material and energy balances class, you'll be using basic algebra: linear equations and system of linear equations. In your junior level courses, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer and mass transfer you'll be using some basic calculus (simple derivatives and integrals, possibly numerical methods, but mostly anlytical), but again it's lot of algebra. It's in your senior level courses such as transport phenonema on dynamic process control that you'll see some heavier math: mulitvariable calculus and differential equations.</p>

<p>
[quote]
What are some typical problems that a chemical engineering student would have to figure out in class?</p>

<p>What types of problems are chemical engineers faced with?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>An example from heat transfer: (theoretical) Calculuate the overall heat transfer coefficient of a bare pipe exposed to rain and wind. (pratical) Given a process fluid flowing through a bare pipe exposed to given conditions, calculate the amount of insulation necessary to meet temperature specifications for the fluid. (design) Design the most economical way to transport a fluid from one point to another given certain temperature specification and other constraints.</p>

<p>
[quote]
How do chemical engineering courses differ from chemistry courses?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Chemical engineers mainly deal with application of the chemical reactions, not the reactions themselves, which is the domain of chemists. For example, a chemist would explore the mechanism of an organic synthesis (for example, the synthesis of the derivatives of triphenylmethanol, aka synthetic dyes) and ways to improve the yield of a bench-top scale reaction. A chemical engineer would not care about the mechanism and would explore thermodynamical methods of increasing the yield of plant-scale operation of the reaction.</p>