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Chemical Engineer
Applies chemistry to large-scale manufacturing — fuels, drugs, food processing, materials.
Did you know?
In 1910, engineer Carl Bosch scaled up a lab method for making ammonia fertiliser. Today about half the nitrogen in your body comes from it.
How subjects help
- Chemistry: Control the reactions that turn oil, sugar or salt into fuels, plastics and medicines.
- Mathematics: Scale up a recipe from a small lab flask to a giant factory tank without waste.
- Physics: Design pipes, pumps and heaters that move hot liquids and gases safely through a plant.
- Biology: Use yeast and bacteria to brew medicines, enzymes and biofuels in huge tanks.
A famous name
George E. Davis: English engineer called the father of chemical engineering; he wrote the first handbook on it in 1901.
Try it yourself: Build a layered water filter
- Set the funnel over the jar and line it with the coffee filter or kitchen paper.
- Add layers from the bottom up: cotton wool, then sand, then gravel on top.
- Pour the muddy water in slowly and watch what comes out. Compare it with a little muddy water you kept back. Never drink it, even if it looks clean: filtering does not kill germs.
- Change the order or thickness of the layers and try again. Which design gives the clearest water?
Chemical and environmental engineers design treatment works that push water through layers of gravel, sand and other materials to take out dirt before further cleaning.
Adapted from TeachEngineering (University of Colorado Boulder): The Dirty Water Project: Design-Build-Test Your Own Water Filters.
Also try: Build a paper bridge.
Known for it in
USA, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Netherlands