Abstract
Chemical engineering is being publicized as the branch of engineering that deals with the chemical and physical processes used to develop and make many products, including pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, artificial kidneys, oil refineries, solar panels, clean water, and biocompatible polymers. Chemical engineers have made major contributions to the technological infrastructure of modern society. In the past decade, chemical engineering is undergoing dramatic changes under the impulse of modern science and technology. Industries are quickly globalizing and engineers are required to do business across their national boundaries.
Chemical engineering has a long tradition and proven methodology of process design with emphasis on commodity chemicals. Nevertheless the chemical industries nowadays are increasingly involved in specialty chemicals (small quantity, batch production, high added value) as well as formulated products. In addition to process design and optimization, which are the major concerns of commodity production, the specialty and formulated product industries face also new technical as well as marketing challenges. In this regard, chemical product engineering is being reemphasized as a new discipline merging several promising areas such as working with multiscale problems, facing complex matter behavior, trying to fulfill society's needs, controlling manufacturing processes, and mimicking biological systems.
All the situations surrounding us call for an examination of the limitations and possibilities of chemical engineering methodology and related education within a new paradigm of product oriented framework. In this talk, we tentatively identify some of the actual and future challenges of chemical engineering education in this changing era to product engineering. Because chemical engineering, a lively engineering science, is unavoidably a part of, not apart from, the society that it serves, our profession must reinvent itself to meet society's expectations. New qualification systems for global engineers are also proposed.
