Environment

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One of the great challenges of the future is sustainable innovation: align the the requirements of economy and industry with the needs of health, environment, and life quality.
Thanks to Chemical Engineering today we have “clean” fuels and engines, anti-pollution systems for the control of fas emissions of thermoelectrical power plants and incinerators, advanced tools for water processing and decontamination of terrains.

Water purification
Water and soil contamination is a complex phenomenon. The Chemical Engineer, studying natural processes, can enhance and accelerate the chemical reactions that transform matter in non-toxic compounds.

Air purification
The chemical engineer studies the processes for the reduction and the elimination of pullutant in gas wastes: for example, cathalitic exhausts have been designed and realized by chemical engineeres. Cathalitical exhausts remove unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides contained in the vehicle exhausts.
The chemical engineer also came up and realized processes to reduce and eliminate pollutants contained in gas wastes of thermoelectrical power plants: for example, the SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction) of nitrous oxides (NOx) contained in combustion fumes are purified via a cathalitic reaction with ammonia (NH3) and transformed in nitrogen and steam. The Chemical Engineer is also involved in the design of low-emission vehicles: for example, he studies new “clean” fuels and technologies for the on-board production of hydrogen on fuel cells vehicles.

Decontamination of terrains
The environment, in its diverse varieties, is one with complex exchange, distribution and transformation mechanisms.
Every activity produces alterations which can be more or less significative, more or less critical for the surrounding environment: in a city, vehicle traffic, discharge of water wastes, from rains or sewers, and disposal of garbage; in agricolture, the application of fertilizers and pesticides; in the industry, the production of energy and of consumer goods.
The Chemical Engineer has the skills to intervene both on pollution prevention, both on the sanification of contaminated areas.

Petrochemical Industry

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Two-third of the world energetic production directly comes from carbon source. Gasoline, diesel and fuels in general are derived from oil and natural gas and are pivotal for the existence of our society. Oil is an important raw material for most of the chemical industry. Currently, more than thirty thousand compounds derive from oil, usually by means of many chemical transformations. Some examples are lubes, detergents, plastics like polypropylene, but drug and flavorings.
The refinement and transformation of the oil is one of the most relevant activity of the work of the chemical engineers.

Energy

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Energy is even more pivotal in our life than we believe. Most of our energy is currently produced from fossil fuels. Their conversion to energy requires several industrial processes where the chemical engineer is at the real heart.
The chemical engineer is capable to solve all the problems related to the conversion of fuels in energy. The optimization of the operative conditions and the minimization of the pollutant emissions requires a careful study of the chemical and physical process of the combustion. The understanding of both the complex reaction mechanism and the fluid dynamics are usual skills of the chemical engineer.
The chemical engineer employs these capabilities in several industrial process both traditional and innovative where his work is of fundamental importance. His activity spans from to power generation to the aftertreatment of the exhaust gas from vehicles, to the production of innovative materials such as nanotubes and fullerenes. Moreover, the chemical engineer is actively involved also in renewable sources like photovoltaics panels and fuel cell.

Safety

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Safety is at the very hearth of the chemical process industry since both raw materials and products are usually dangerous, corrosive and can explode.
Industrial accidents in the chemical industry are usual of huge impact leading to a rational analysis of the risks by means of quantitative analysis based of a scientific approach.
The knowledge on this area is grown in the last decades and now is one of the pillar of the competences of the chemical engineers.

Innovation

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Chemical Engineering, in collaboration with other scientific disciplines, has a critical role in the development of new technologies and products.
Among the various innovation sectors, computer modeling, based on the study of physical-chemical phenomena that take place in processes, and the design of reactors for the production of advanced materials are prominent.
Other innovative sectors where the chemical engineer has relevant skills are the laser and solar cells ones. The techniques for nanomanufacturing and the ideation of microreactors are other highly advanced sectors.
Applications regard chemical analysis and synthesis, with the relative studies of kynetics and process development (for example, for electronical manufacturing).

Using computers for process modeling
The spread of powerful computers, with a computational power up unimaginable until a few years ago, has allowed, through the design and simulation, to optimize or even come up with novel machinery and processes.
The detailed study of phenomena that take place in an industrial process and its trasformation into a mathematical model allows, in most cases, to identify the possibility of an improvement of the process itself, for example with regard to energy savings, environmental impact or the increase and qualitative improvement of manufacturing.
Fluid dynamics, matter and heat transport phenomena, complex systems kynetics, the temporal evolution of a production unit are only some of the topics that modern computers can handle.
Creating and using computational programs and intuitive graphical user interfaces, the Chemical Engineer gets in touch with the fascinating field of simulation sofware and supercomputation.
Thus, he becomes an expert in the most advanced computer technologies.

Materials

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The materials employed in different kinds of engineering must satisfy more and more strict requirements.
This constraints affect production processes, that must guarantee a more and more strict control of defects contained in the material and must be designed within regulations for the release of harmful substances.
These processes transform raw materials or act as the last stage of material recycling, giving it the necessary requirements to create a new product.
During this production stage, the Chemical Engineer has an important role, which comes from his general and specific knowledge that he has acquired on tranformation processes involved in this industry sector.

The integrated circuit
An Integrated Circuit (IC) is a very high tech product: for its manufacturing, various processes that require Chemical Engineers are necessary.
Silicon can be produced from silica, which is contained in natured is present in sand. It is necessary to apply a chemical reduction process to obtain elemental silicon, but this is not sufficient!
In order to work, the integrated circuit must have a very low defect density: this requirement makes a purification tratment necessary, in order to obtain a single crystal, controlling solidification in an extremely accurate way.
Next, the manufacturing of the integrated circuit requires oxydation, selective dissolution, and chemical deposition operations, which make modifying the local conductivity properties of the material possible.

Medicine

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The understanding of the inner workings of the human body has always be a hard and fascinating challenge, both for doctors and for scientists. The final goal is of the most noble ones: the improvement of the quality of life and the increase of life expectations.
The Chemical Engineer takes part to the biomedical research thanks to his knowledge of fluid dynamics and of transportation phenomena, which define the motion laws of fluids and of compounds diffusion within the organism (for example, drug absorption and oxygen transportation in the blood stream).
Thus, it becomes possible to understand in depth how organs work. Based on this knowledge, it becomes possible to realize new and more efficient artificial organs, like heart and kidneys.

Pharmaceutical
Since ancient times knowledge on how to best employ plant extracts to relieve pain and cure illnesses has been acquired. Even though not knowing chemistry and its rules, man was able to modify empirically, to his own advantage, nature’s products.
Later, chemists were able to extract active agents, identify and synthesize analogous and but more efficient products. Doctors identified the correct doses for a better efficacy and pharmacists studied effective packagings. This was how drugs became available for men, animals and for plant protection, and more in general products to imrpove health and quality of life.
But when it became necessary to manufacture drugs in very high numbers at very low prices the pharmaceutical industry appeared, and Chemical Engineering contributed in a critical way with:
– the design and the development of processes
– the design of plants
– The study and design of drug delivery inside the human body
– The design of systems for the verification of production quality
– The design of packaging systems.
To do this job, today the chemical engineer uses tools that go from computer based modeling to the individuation and use of innovative materials.

Food Industry

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The continuous growth of the word population along with the impossibility of increasing the farmlands determines the fundamental need of efficient exploitation of the available resources.
The role of the chemical engineer is pivotal in this activity. He is able to design, develop and optimize the plants for the production of fertilizers to increase their production and to reduce their environmental footprint.
The conservation of foods (e.g. sterilization and pasteurization) uses process whose knowledge is part of the experience of chemical engineers.

Cosmetics

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To get an idea of how important the Chemical Engineering contribution is in daily life, one might just think about the fact that every home in the western world and most of the ones in the rest of the world use soaps, detergents, decalcifiers, rines aid, deoxidants, whiteners, fabric softeners, waxes, silicons, deodorants, fragrances, perfumes, cosmetics, lotions of every kind, etc.
Chemical Engineering, in this case, has allowed such a vast manufacturing size to result in very low costs, but also innovation towards ecological processes.