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Slide 01
Chemical Engineering
- Transforming Matter at Industrial Scale
- The discipline that turns laboratory reactions into billion-dollar processes -- from petroleum refining to pharmaceuticals, from semiconductors to sustainable fuels.
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Slide 02
What Is Chemical Engineering?
- Chemical engineering applies chemistry, physics, mathematics, and economics to efficiently produce, transform, transport, and use chemicals, materials, and energy at industrial scale.
- Core Pillars
- Transport Phenomena: Heat, mass, and momentum transfer
- Thermodynamics: Phase equilibria, reaction equilibria
- Chemical Kinetics: Reaction rates and mechanisms
- Reactor Design: CSTR, PFR, packed bed, fluidized bed
- Separation Processes: Distillation, extraction, membranes
- Process Control: Feedback, feedforward, cascade
- By the Numbers
- $5.7T
- Global chemical industry revenue (2024)
- $108K
- Median US chemical engineer salary
- 70,000+
- Chemical products in commerce
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Slide 03
Origins: From Alchemy to Industry
- Chemical engineering emerged when the scale of chemical production outgrew what chemists alone could manage.
- 3000 BC
- Ancient chemical arts: Egyptians practiced embalming, dyeing, glass-making, and metallurgy. Sumerian cuneiform tablets describe perfume distillation.
- 1746
- Lead chamber process: John Roebuck scaled sulfuric acid production from glass bottles to lead-lined chambers -- the first industrial chemical process. Sulfuric acid remains the most-produced industrial chemical (260 million tons/year).
- 1823
- Leblanc process: Industrial soda ash production from salt, sulfuric acid, limestone, and coal. Highly polluting but launched the chemical industry.
- 1888
- "Chemical Engineering" coined: George Davis delivered 12 lectures at Manchester Technical School outlining unit operations -- the first curriculum for the discipline.
- 1908
- MIT establishes first ChE department: Separated from chemistry, with focus on industrial-scale processes, heat/mass transfer, and equipment design.
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Slide 04
The Haber-Bosch Process
- The most important chemical engineering achievement in history -- directly responsible for feeding half the world's population.
- The Problem
- Nitrogen gas (N2) makes up 78% of the atmosphere but is nearly inert -- its triple bond (945 kJ/mol) is one of the strongest in nature. Plants need fixed nitrogen to grow. By 1900, natural sources (guano, Chilean saltpeter) were running out. Famine seemed inevitable.
- The Solution
- N2 + 3H2 -> 2NH3
- Fritz Haber (1909): demonstrated ammonia synthesis at lab scale. Carl Bosch (1913): scaled it to industrial production at BASF using:
- Iron catalyst with promoters (Al2O3, K2O)
- 150-300 atm pressure
- 400-500C temperature
- Recycling of unreacted gases
- Today: 180 million tons of ammonia/year. 1-2% of world energy consumption. 50% of nitrogen in your body passed through this process.
- "Bread from air" -- the Haber-Bosch process converts atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizer, enabling the Green Revolution that averted predicted mass starvation.
- -- Vaclav Smil, "Enriching the Earth" (2001)
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Slide 05
Unit Operations
- George Davis and Arthur D. Little formalized the concept: all chemical processes, no matter how different, consist of the same fundamental physical operations.
- Fluid Flow
- Pumps (centrifugal, positive displacement)
- Compressors
- Piping and valves
- Fluidization
- Heat Transfer
- Shell-and-tube exchangers
- Plate heat exchangers
- Evaporators
- Fired heaters/furnaces
- Mass Transfer
- Distillation (trayed/packed columns)
- Absorption/stripping
- Liquid-liquid extraction
- Adsorption (PSA, TSA)
- Separation
- Filtration
- Centrifugation
- Membrane separation
- Crystallization
- Reaction
- Batch reactors
- CSTR (continuous stirred tank)
- PFR (plug flow reactor)
- Catalytic reactors
- Particle Processing
- Grinding and milling
- Drying (spray, rotary, fluidized bed)
- Mixing and blending
- Granulation
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Slide 06
Transport Phenomena
- The unifying framework of chemical engineering -- momentum, heat, and mass transfer all follow analogous mathematical descriptions.
- The Three Transports
- TransportDriving ForceLaw
- MomentumVelocity gradientNewton's (viscosity)
- HeatTemperature gradientFourier's (conductivity)
- MassConcentration gradientFick's (diffusivity)
- All three: Flux = -Transport Property x Gradient
- Dimensionless Numbers
- Reynolds (Re): Inertia/viscous -- turbulence onset
- Prandtl (Pr): Momentum/thermal diffusivity
- Schmidt (Sc): Momentum/mass diffusivity
- Nusselt (Nu): Convective/conductive heat transfer
- Sherwood (Sh): Convective/diffusive mass transfer
- Damkohler (Da): Reaction rate/transport rate
- Bird, Stewart, and Lightfoot's "Transport Phenomena" (1960) -- the landmark textbook that unified the three transport processes under a common mathematical framework. It remains the most cited chemical engineering textbook, with over 30,000 citations.
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Slide 07
Chemical Reaction Engineering
- Designing reactors that maximize yield, selectivity, and safety while minimizing cost and waste.
- Reactor Types
- Batch: All reactants charged at once -- pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals (flexibility, small volumes)
- CSTR: Continuous feed and withdrawal, perfectly mixed -- polymerization, wastewater
- PFR (Tubular): Continuous, no mixing along length -- cracking, high-volume chemicals
- Packed Bed: Catalyst pellets in a tube -- Haber-Bosch, Fischer-Tropsch, catalytic reforming
- Fluidized Bed: Catalyst suspended by upflow gas -- FCC (fluid catalytic cracking), polyethylene
- Key Concepts
- Conversion (X): Fraction of reactant consumed
- Selectivity (S): Desired product / total products formed
- Residence time: Average time material spends in reactor
- Space velocity: Volumetric flow / reactor volume (GHSV, LHSV)
- Arrhenius equation: k = A*exp(-Ea/RT) -- exponential temperature dependence
- Runaway reactions: When heat generation exceeds removal -- explosion risk
- "The reactor is the heart of the chemical process. Everything before it prepares the feed; everything after it separates the products."
- -- Octave Levenspiel, "Chemical Reaction Engineering" (1962)
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Slide 08
Distillation: The Workhorse Separation
- Distillation consumes 3% of the world's total energy and performs 90% of all industrial separations by volume.
- How It Works
- Repeated vaporization and condensation exploits differences in boiling points. A column provides multiple "stages" of equilibrium contact between rising vapor and descending liquid.
- Reflux ratio: Liquid returned / product taken -- higher ratio = better separation but more energy
- McCabe-Thiele: Graphical method for determining number of theoretical stages
- Relative volatility: alpha = (y/x) / ((1-y)/(1-x)) -- must be > 1 for separation
- Azeotropes: Mixtures that boil at constant composition -- require special techniques
- Industrial Scale
- Crude oil distillation: Atmospheric column processes 100,000+ barrels/day at 350C, separating into gas, naphtha, kerosene, diesel, and residue
- Air separation: Cryogenic distillation at -196C produces 550 million tons of O2/year
- Ethylene production: Largest chemical columns -- 60-100m tall, 5-8m diameter, 100+ trays
- Column internals: Trays (sieve, valve, bubble cap) or structured packing (Sulzer Mellapak) -- packing offers lower pressure drop and higher capacity
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Slide 09
Petroleum Refining
- The largest application of chemical engineering -- converting crude oil into fuels, plastics feedstocks, and thousands of products.
- Major Refinery Processes
- Atmospheric distillation: First separation by boiling point
- Vacuum distillation: Heavy fractions at reduced pressure
- Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC): Breaks heavy molecules into gasoline-range, 700C over zeolite catalyst
- Hydrocracking: High-pressure H2 (150 atm) converts heavy oil to jet fuel/diesel
- Catalytic reforming: Converts naphtha to high-octane aromatics (BTX), produces H2
- Hydrotreating: Removes sulfur (Alkylation: Combines light olefins with isobutane for premium gasoline
- Scale and Complexity
- World's largest refinery: Jamnagar, India (1.24 million barrels/day)
- A typical refinery has 15-20 major process units
- 100,000+ instruments and control loops
- $10-20 billion construction cost for new complex refineries
- Nelson Complexity Index measures sophistication (simple: 2, complex: 14+)
- 100M
- Barrels of oil refined daily worldwide
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Slide 10
Catalysis: Accelerating Reactions
- 90% of all chemical processes use catalysts. They accelerate reactions without being consumed, enabling lower temperatures, fewer byproducts, and massive energy savings.
- Heterogeneous Catalysis
- Haber-Bosch: Iron catalyst for ammonia synthesis
- FCC Zeolites: Shape-selective cracking of hydrocarbons
- Three-way automotive: Pt/Pd/Rh converts CO, NOx, and hydrocarbons simultaneously
- Ziegler-Natta: TiCl4/Al(C2H5)3 for stereospecific polymerization -- revolutionized plastics
- Fischer-Tropsch: Cobalt/iron converts syngas (CO+H2) to liquid fuels
- Enzyme Catalysis (Biocatalysis)
- Enzymes are nature's catalysts: 10^6 to 10^17 rate acceleration
- Immobilized enzymes: Fixed to supports for continuous use (HFCS production, biodiesel)
- Directed evolution: 2018 Nobel Prize (Frances Arnold) -- engineer enzymes for non-natural reactions
- Industrial scale: Detergent proteases, starch conversion, pharmaceutical intermediates
- Catalyst deactivation -- poisons (sulfur on metal catalysts), coking (carbon deposits), sintering (particle growth at high temperature), and leaching limit catalyst life. Refineries spend $15-20 billion/year on fresh and regenerated catalysts.
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Slide 11
Polymer Engineering
- Plastics, rubbers, fibers, adhesives, and coatings -- polymers are everywhere, and chemical engineers design both the materials and the processes to make them.
- Major Polymers and Processes
- PolymerProduction (Mt/yr)Process
- Polyethylene110Gas-phase, slurry, solution
- Polypropylene75Ziegler-Natta, metallocene
- PVC45Suspension, emulsion
- PET30Polycondensation
- Polystyrene25Bulk, suspension
- Polyurethane25Reaction injection
- Polymerization Mechanisms
- Addition (chain-growth): Free radical, anionic, cationic, coordination -- fast, high MW
- Condensation (step-growth): Two functional groups react, releasing small molecule (water). Nylon, PET, epoxies
- Living polymerization: No termination -- precise MW control, block copolymers
- Ring-opening: Cyclic monomers (caprolactam for Nylon 6)
- Total global plastic production: 400+ million tons/year (2024). Only ~9% is recycled.
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Slide 12
Process Design and Economics
- Chemical engineers don't just make reactions work -- they make them profitable, safe, and sustainable at scale.
- Process Design Steps
- Conceptual design: Block flow diagram, reaction routes, separation strategies
- Process Flow Diagram (PFD): Equipment, streams, operating conditions
- P&ID (Piping & Instrumentation): Every valve, instrument, control loop
- Heat integration (pinch analysis): Minimize utility consumption by matching hot and cold streams
- Equipment sizing: Columns, vessels, exchangers, pumps
- HAZOP: Systematic safety review of deviations
- Economic Analysis
- CAPEX: Equipment, installation, construction (estimated via factored methods)
- OPEX: Raw materials (40-80% of cost), utilities, labor, maintenance
- NPV / IRR: Project viability over 20-30 year lifetime
- Economies of scale: Capacity^0.6 rule -- doubling capacity increases cost by only 52%
- Typical ROI threshold: 15-25% IRR for petrochemical investments
- Process simulators (Aspen Plus, HYSYS, PRO/II) solve mass/energy balances with thermodynamic models for thousands of components simultaneously. A single refinery model may contain 500+ unit operations and 2000+ streams.
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Slide 13
Process Safety
- Chemical plants handle flammable, toxic, and reactive materials at extreme conditions. Safety is not optional -- it is the primary design constraint.
- Major Disasters
- Bhopal (1984): 40 tons of methyl isocyanate leaked -- 3,800+ immediate deaths. Caused by water ingress into storage tank. Led to global chemical safety regulation.
- Texas City (2005): BP refinery explosion killed 15. Overfilling of raffinate splitter during startup. Resulted in $1.6B in penalties and payouts.
- Deepwater Horizon (2010): Uncontrolled blowout -- failure of multiple barriers. Process safety management failures throughout.
- Safety Framework
- Inherently safer design: Minimize inventory, substitute hazardous materials, moderate conditions
- Layers of protection: Process design > alarms > SIS > relief devices > physical containment > emergency response
- HAZOP: "What if?" analysis of every deviation from normal operation
- SIL (Safety Integrity Level): Quantified reliability of safety instrumented functions
- Management of Change: Any modification requires formal hazard review
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Slide 14
Thermodynamics for Chemical Engineers
- Phase equilibria, fugacity, and activity coefficients -- the thermodynamic toolkit that predicts what can be separated and how.
- Equations of State
- Ideal Gas: PV = nRT (only valid at low pressure)
- Van der Waals (1873): First to account for molecular interactions
- Peng-Robinson (1976): Workhorse for hydrocarbon systems
- SRK (Soave-Redlich-Kwong): Alternative cubic EOS
- SAFT: Statistical associating fluid theory -- complex molecules, polymers
- CPA: Cubic Plus Association -- polar/hydrogen-bonding systems
- Activity Coefficient Models
- NRTL: Non-Random Two-Liquid -- liquid-liquid equilibrium
- UNIQUAC: Universal Quasi-Chemical -- surface area contributions
- UNIFAC: Group contribution method -- predicts from molecular structure alone
- Wilson: Simple, works well for completely miscible systems
- Choosing the right thermodynamic model is the single most impactful decision in process simulation. Wrong model = wrong design = lost millions.
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Slide 15
Pharmaceutical Manufacturing
- Producing medicines at guaranteed purity -- where chemical engineering meets GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) regulations.
- Drug Manufacturing Steps
- API synthesis: Multi-step organic reactions (typically 5-15 steps)
- Purification: Crystallization, chromatography, filtration
- Formulation: Mixing API with excipients, granulation, coating
- Fill-finish: Sterile filling of vials (biologics) or tablet pressing
- Quality control: Every batch tested -- HPLC, dissolution, stability
- Pharma batch sizes: 10 kg to 10,000 kg of API. Yield improvements of even 5% save millions per year.
- Continuous Manufacturing
- Traditionally pharma used batch processing. The industry is now shifting to continuous:
- Flow chemistry: reactions in microreactors (seconds vs. hours)
- Real-time analytics (PAT: Process Analytical Technology)
- Smaller equipment footprint (10x reduction)
- Consistent quality vs. batch-to-batch variation
- FDA encouraged: first approved continuous drug in 2015 (Vertex, Orkambi)
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Slide 16
Biochemical Engineering
- Merging biology with chemical engineering -- from brewing beer to growing monoclonal antibodies in 20,000-liter bioreactors.
- Bioreactor Design
- Stirred-tank: Most common -- impellers provide mixing and O2 transfer (kLa optimization)
- Airlift: Gentle mixing via rising bubbles -- shear-sensitive cells
- Packed bed: Immobilized cells/enzymes on solid supports
- Single-use: Disposable plastic bags up to 2000L -- reduce cleaning validation
- Perfusion: Continuous cell culture with cell retention -- 10x product concentration
- Products and Scale
- Monoclonal antibodies: $200B market -- CHO cells in 10,000-25,000L reactors
- Insulin: Recombinant E. coli or yeast fermentation
- Ethanol: 110 billion liters/year from corn and sugarcane
- Amino acids: L-glutamate (MSG): 3.5 million tons/year by fermentation
- mRNA vaccines: In vitro transcription + lipid nanoparticle encapsulation -- ChE-designed processes
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Slide 17
Semiconductor Manufacturing
- Chemical engineers play a central role in chip fabrication -- the most complex manufacturing process ever devised.
- ChE Processes in Fab
- CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition): Deposit thin films from gas-phase precursors -- SiO2, Si3N4, tungsten
- ALD (Atomic Layer Deposition): One atomic layer at a time -- angstrom precision
- Etching: Plasma-enhanced reactive ion etching (RIE) removes material with nm precision
- CMP (Chemical-Mechanical Polishing): Planarization to 0.5 nm RMS roughness
- Photoresist chemistry: EUV resists with chemically amplified mechanisms
- Ultra-pure water: 18.2 MΩ-cm resistivity,
- Scale and Purity
- Modern fabs: $20-30 billion construction cost
- Cleanroom: Class 1 ( 0.5um per ft3)
- Process gases: 99.9999999% purity (9N)
- 700-1000 process steps for advanced chips
- Chemical usage: 30+ specialty gases, 100+ liquid chemicals per fab
- 3 nm
- Current leading-edge node (TSMC/Samsung, 2024)
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Slide 18
Membrane Technology
- Semi-permeable membranes separate mixtures without phase change -- often at lower energy than distillation.
- Types by Pore Size
- ProcessPore SizeRemoves
- Microfiltration0.1-10 umBacteria, particles
- Ultrafiltration1-100 nmProteins, viruses
- Nanofiltration~1 nmDivalent ions, organics
- Reverse Osmosis~0.3 nmAll dissolved solids
- Gas separationMolecularCO2/N2, O2/N2
- Industrial Applications
- Desalination: 100+ million m3/day worldwide by RO. Energy: 3-4 kWh/m3 (near thermodynamic minimum of 1.06)
- Nitrogen generation: Hollow-fiber membranes separate N2 from air
- Hydrogen recovery: Palladium membranes achieve 99.9999% purity
- Kidney dialysis: Hollow-fiber artificial kidney -- 550 million treatments/year globally
- CO2 capture: Membrane contactors for post-combustion capture
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Slide 19
Electrochemistry and Batteries
- Chemical engineers design the materials, cells, and manufacturing processes for the energy storage revolution.
- Lithium-Ion Battery Engineering
- Cathode: NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt), LFP (iron phosphate), NCA (nickel-cobalt-aluminum)
- Anode: Graphite (372 mAh/g) transitioning to silicon (3580 mAh/g theoretical)
- Electrolyte: LiPF6 in organic carbonate solvents -- solid-state electrolytes emerging
- Separator: PE/PP microporous membrane (20 um thick)
- Manufacturing: Slurry coating, calendering, cell assembly -- gigafactory scale
- Beyond Li-Ion
- Solid-state: Ceramic/sulfide electrolytes -- higher energy density, no flammable liquid
- Sodium-ion: Abundant materials, lower cost for grid storage
- Flow batteries: Vanadium redox -- hours of grid storage, 20+ year life
- Hydrogen fuel cells: PEM electrolyzers and fuel cells -- ChE designs the MEA (membrane electrode assembly)
- Lithium-sulfur: 5x theoretical energy density of Li-ion
- Battery cost trajectory: From $1,200/kWh in 2010 to $139/kWh in 2023 (BloombergNEF). Chemical engineering advances in electrode processing, electrolyte formulation, and manufacturing scale drove the 89% cost reduction.
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Slide 20
Water Treatment Engineering
- Clean water is civilization's most critical chemical product. Chemical engineers design systems treating billions of gallons daily.
- Drinking Water Treatment
- Coagulation/Flocculation: Al2(SO4)3 or FeCl3 destabilizes colloids -- particles aggregate
- Sedimentation: Gravity separation (Stokes' Law)
- Filtration: Sand, GAC (granular activated carbon), membrane
- Disinfection: Chlorine (most common), ozone, UV
- Advanced: RO for desalination, ion exchange for softening, activated carbon for organics
- Wastewater Treatment
- Primary: Screens, grit removal, primary clarifiers
- Secondary (biological): Activated sludge -- bacteria consume organics. BOD removal > 95%
- Tertiary: Nutrient removal (N, P), filtration, disinfection
- Anaerobic digestion: Converts sludge to biogas (60% CH4) -- many plants are now net energy producers
- Emerging: Direct potable reuse -- Singapore's NEWater, Orange County GWRS
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Slide 21
Process Control and Instrumentation
- Keeping thousands of variables at setpoint simultaneously -- the nervous system of a chemical plant.
- Control Hierarchy
- Regulatory (Level 0): Single-loop PID controllers -- 95% of all industrial loops
- Advanced (Level 1): Cascade, ratio, feedforward, override
- Model Predictive Control (Level 2): Multi-variable optimization -- refinery profit increase of $0.05-0.20/barrel
- Planning/Scheduling (Level 3): Linear programming for production optimization
- Enterprise (Level 4): Supply chain, business decisions
- Instrumentation
- Temperature: Thermocouples (Type K, J, T), RTDs (Pt100)
- Pressure: Diaphragm, capacitance, piezoelectric
- Flow: Orifice plate, Coriolis (mass), vortex, magnetic
- Level: Radar, ultrasonic, differential pressure, float
- Composition: Online GC, NIR, Raman, pH
- DCS: Distributed Control System -- redundant controllers managing 50,000+ I/O points in a large plant
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Slide 22
Corrosion Engineering
- Corrosion costs the global economy $2.5 trillion/year (3.4% of GDP). Chemical engineers select materials and design protection systems.
- Corrosion Mechanisms
- Uniform: Even dissolution (mild steel in acid)
- Galvanic: Dissimilar metals in contact (zinc sacrifices for steel)
- Pitting: Localized attack -- stainless steel in chloride environments
- Crevice: Oxygen depletion under gaskets, flanges
- Stress corrosion cracking: Combined tension + corrosive environment = sudden failure
- Erosion-corrosion: High-velocity fluids remove protective films
- Prevention Strategies
- Material selection: 316L SS, Hastelloy, titanium, FRP for aggressive chemicals
- Coatings: Epoxy, polyurethane, thermal spray, rubber lining
- Cathodic protection: Sacrificial anodes or impressed current (pipelines, ships)
- Inhibitors: Chemical additives reduce corrosion rate (oilfield, cooling water)
- Design: Avoid crevices, ensure drainage, eliminate dissimilar metal contacts
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Slide 23
Food and Beverage Processing
- Chemical engineering principles ensure safe, shelf-stable food at massive scale -- feeding 8 billion people daily.
- Key Processes
- Pasteurization: 72C for 15 seconds (HTST) or 135C for 2 seconds (UHT for shelf-stable milk)
- Spray drying: Liquid to powder in seconds -- milk powder, instant coffee (inlet 200C, outlet 90C)
- Extrusion: High shear + heat transforms starch -- cereals, snacks, pet food
- Fermentation: Beer, wine, yogurt, cheese, soy sauce -- controlled microbiology
- Freeze drying: Sublimation preserves structure -- astronaut food, instant coffee premium
- Engineering Challenges
- Rheology: Non-Newtonian fluids (ketchup, yogurt) -- shear-thinning behavior
- Aseptic processing: Sterilize product and package separately, fill in sterile environment
- Fouling: Protein/mineral deposits on heat exchangers reduce efficiency
- Scale-up: Lab recipe to factory -- mixing, heat transfer, and timing change with scale
- Clean-in-place (CIP): Automated cleaning without disassembly -- caustic, acid, rinse cycles
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Slide 24
Environmental Chemical Engineering
- Cleaning up pollution and designing processes that prevent it in the first place.
- Air Pollution Control
- SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction): NH3 + NOx -> N2 + H2O over V2O5/TiO2 catalyst. 90%+ NOx removal in power plants
- Flue gas desulfurization: Wet scrubbing with limestone slurry removes 95%+ SO2
- Activated carbon adsorption: VOC and mercury removal
- Electrostatic precipitators: 99.5%+ particulate removal
- Regenerative thermal oxidizers: Destroy VOCs at 800C with 95% heat recovery
- Green Chemistry Principles
- Atom economy: Maximize atoms from reactants that end up in product
- Solvent-free: Eliminate or use green solvents (water, scCO2, ionic liquids)
- Catalytic vs. stoichiometric: Reduce waste by using catalysts
- Renewable feedstocks: Bio-based chemicals from biomass
- Process intensification: Microreactors, reactive distillation -- smaller, safer, less waste
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Slide 25
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
- Chemical engineering's biggest challenge this century: removing CO2 from flue gas and the atmosphere at gigatonne scale.
- Capture Technologies
- Amine scrubbing: MEA/MDEA absorb CO2 at 40C, release it at 120C. Energy penalty: 25-40% of plant output. 50 years of operational experience.
- Pressure Swing Adsorption: Solid sorbents (zeolites, MOFs) adsorb CO2 at high pressure, desorb at low
- Membrane separation: Polymeric or mixed-matrix membranes -- lower energy, modular
- Calcium looping: CaO + CO2 -> CaCO3 at 650C, regenerate at 900C
- Direct Air Capture: Amine-functionalized sorbents or KOH solutions capture from 420 ppm ambient CO2
- Scale Challenge
- Need to capture 6-10 Gt CO2/year by 2050 (IEA Net Zero)
- Current capacity: ~45 Mt/year (0.1% of emissions)
- Largest plant: Boundary Dam (1 Mt/year, Saskatchewan)
- Cost: $50-120/ton (point source), $250-600/ton (DAC)
- Storage: Depleted oil/gas fields, saline aquifers (Sleipner stores 1 Mt/year since 1996)
- $1T+
- Estimated annual CCS market by 2050
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Slide 26
Hydrogen Economy
- Hydrogen as a clean energy carrier -- chemical engineers design the production, storage, and utilization systems.
- Production Methods (Color Coding)
- Grey H2: Steam methane reforming (SMR) -- 95% of current production. CH4 + H2O -> CO + 3H2 at 800-900C. 10 kg CO2 per kg H2.
- Blue H2: SMR + carbon capture -- reduces emissions 85-95%
- Green H2: Water electrolysis powered by renewables. 2H2O -> 2H2 + O2. PEM or alkaline electrolyzers. Currently 5-10x more expensive than grey.
- Turquoise H2: Methane pyrolysis -- solid carbon byproduct (no CO2). Emerging.
- Engineering Challenges
- Storage: 700 bar compressed, liquid at -253C, or solid-state (metal hydrides, ammonia carrier)
- Transport: Hydrogen embrittlement of steel pipelines requires new materials or polymer lining
- Fuel cells: PEM (80C, transport), SOFC (800C, stationary) -- 50-60% electrical efficiency
- Green ammonia: Haber-Bosch powered by green H2 -- easier to ship than H2 (liquid at -33C vs -253C)
- Scale-up target: 10 Mt/year green H2 by 2030 (current:
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Slide 27
Process Intensification
- Dramatically shrinking equipment while maintaining or improving performance -- the future of chemical manufacturing.
- Key Strategies
- Microreactors: Channels 50-500 um -- 1000x better heat/mass transfer than batch. Eliminate hot spots in exothermic reactions
- Reactive distillation: Combine reaction and separation in one column -- reduces equipment and energy 30-50%
- Spinning disc reactors: 100-um films on rotating surface -- millisecond mixing
- Oscillatory baffled reactors: Plug flow behavior at low net flow rates
- 3D-printed reactors: Custom geometries optimized by CFD simulation
- Benefits
- Safety: Small inventory -- grams instead of tons of hazardous material at any time
- Selectivity: Precise temperature/mixing control eliminates side reactions
- Speed: Reactions in seconds vs. hours
- Footprint: Container-sized plants replace buildings
- Distributed manufacturing: Produce chemicals where needed -- reduce transport
- Lonza's continuous flow production of Efavirenz (HIV drug) reduced 20 batch steps to 3 continuous operations.
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Slide 28
Materials Engineering Frontiers
- Chemical engineers are creating the advanced materials that enable next-generation technologies.
- MOFs (Metal-Organic Frameworks)
- Crystalline porous materials with surface areas up to 7000 m2/g (football field in a sugar cube). Applications: gas storage (H2, CH4), CO2 capture, drug delivery, catalysis. Over 100,000 structures in databases.
- Graphene and 2D Materials
- Single-atom-thick sheets with extraordinary properties. Graphene: 130 GPa strength, 5000 W/mK conductivity. ChE challenge: scalable production from graphite (CVD, exfoliation, reduction of GO).
- Self-Healing Materials
- Microcapsules release healing agents when cracked, or reversible bonds reform autonomously. Applications: pipelines, coatings, electronics. Extend service life 200-300%.
- Perovskites for Solar
- ABX3 crystal structure -- solution-processable solar cells reaching 26%+ efficiency (rivaling silicon). Chemical engineering challenge: stability (moisture, heat) and scalable deposition (slot-die coating, ink-jet printing).
- Biodegradable Plastics
- PLA (polylactic acid from corn starch), PHA (produced by bacteria), PBS. ChE role: fermentation optimization, polymerization, processing to match conventional plastic properties at competitive cost.
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Slide 29
Computational Chemical Engineering
- From molecular simulation to plant-wide optimization -- computation is transforming every aspect of the field.
- Molecular Modeling
- DFT (Density Functional Theory): Predict catalyst activity, reaction pathways
- Molecular Dynamics: Simulate millions of atoms -- membrane transport, polymer behavior
- COSMO-RS: Predict thermodynamic properties from quantum chemistry alone
- Machine learning potentials: Neural networks replace expensive quantum calculations -- 10^6x speedup
- AI in Chemical Engineering
- Retrosynthesis: AI plans synthetic routes (Synthia, ASKCOS)
- Process optimization: Reinforcement learning for reactor operation
- Predictive maintenance: Anomaly detection from sensor data
- Materials discovery: Screen millions of candidates computationally before synthesis
- Digital twins: Real-time first-principles plant models for optimization
- AlphaFold (DeepMind, 2020) -- predicted 3D protein structures from amino acid sequences. Now biochemical engineers use it to design enzymes for industrial biocatalysis without years of experimental crystallography.
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Slide 30
Notable Chemical Engineers
- Carl Bosch (1874-1940)
- Scaled the Haber process to industrial production. Solved problems of hydrogen embrittlement in steel reactors, catalyst poisoning, and high-pressure equipment design. Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1931.
- Frances Arnold (1956-)
- Pioneered directed evolution of enzymes -- evolving proteins in the lab using the same principles as Darwinian evolution. Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018. Her methods produce enzymes for pharmaceuticals, biofuels, and green chemistry.
- Lise Meitner (1878-1968)
- Co-discoverer of nuclear fission. Though a physicist, her work enabled the nuclear fuel cycle -- uranium enrichment (gaseous diffusion, centrifuges) and reactor design are chemical engineering.
- Andrew Grove (1936-2016)
- ChE PhD from Berkeley, became CEO of Intel. Applied chemical engineering principles (process control, yield optimization, contamination management) to semiconductor manufacturing -- transforming it from art to science.
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Slide 31
The Chemical Engineering Curriculum
- What it takes to become a chemical engineer -- one of the most rigorous undergraduate programs.
- Core Courses
- Year 1-2: Calculus, differential equations, physics, general/organic/physical chemistry
- Year 2-3: Mass & energy balances, thermodynamics, transport phenomena, kinetics
- Year 3-4: Reactor design, separations, process control, process design, lab
- Capstone: Full plant design -- PFD, equipment sizing, economics, safety (team project)
- Career Sectors
- Oil & Gas: Upstream, refining, petrochemicals
- Pharma/Biotech: Process development, manufacturing
- Semiconductors: Fab process engineering
- Chemicals: Specialty, commodity, polymers
- Energy: Batteries, hydrogen, nuclear, solar
- Consulting/Finance: Process economics, tech investment
- Food & Consumer: P&G, Unilever, Nestle
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Slide 32
Key Takeaways
- Defining Contributions
- Haber-Bosch feeds half the world's population
- Petroleum refining powers modern civilization
- Semiconductor fabrication enables the digital age
- Water treatment prevents millions of deaths annually
- Pharmaceutical manufacturing delivers life-saving drugs at scale
- Future Imperatives
- Decarbonize: CCS, green hydrogen, electrification
- Circularize: Recycle plastics, close material loops
- Intensify: Smaller, safer, more efficient processes
- Digitize: AI-driven design, digital twins, autonomous plants
- Biologize: Engineered organisms as chemical factories
- "Chemical engineers make the things that make things -- and increasingly, they unmake the things that threaten our planet."
- -- Adapted from industry saying
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