Chemical Engineering Science, Vol. 52, No. 6, pp. iii iv, 1997
Elsevier Science Ltd. Printed in Great Britain PII: S0009-2509(97)00005-5
COMMENT


Chemistry and Chemical Engineering


Chemistry has always been an essential part of chemical engineering. What is
interesting to reflect upon, though, is the way in which this branch of sci
ence has impacted on our field and to anticipate how it will contribute to t
he field in the future. During the first part of the century, chemical engin
eers focused mainly on utilizing their knowledge of physical chemistry, and
in particular classical thermodynamics and kinetics, to identify the fundame
ntal factors limiting product yield in chemical reactions and the efficiency
of separation processes. Likewise, knowledge of the physical chemistry of e
lectrolytes contributed to an understanding of the behavior of electrochemic
al systems. In the second half of the century, increasing attention has been
devoted to understanding chemical processes from a molecular perspective an
d to identifying the relationships between molecular structure and propertie
s. This has led to the successful prediction of thermodynamic and transport
properties, which previously could only be obtained by experimental measurem
ent, and in some cases to the prediction of rate coefficients for the dynami
cs of chemical reactions. The application of spectroscopic techniques has pr
ovided insights into the structure of polymers, the mechanisms of chemical r
eactions, and the structure and properties of catalysts and other materials.


Looking towards the 21st century, one can see a number of reasons for chemic
al engineers to become even more deeply involved in chemistry than they have
been in the past. Amongst the principal motivations are the need to find ch
eaper feedstocks for chemicals, the search for catalysts and processing stra
tegies to achieve higher product selectivity, the search for routes to desir
ed products that involve a minimum potential for the release of toxic or env
ironmentally harmful products, and the development of products that can read
ily be recycled or will degrade in an environmentally acceptable fashion. Ne
w technological opportunities will also arise as a consequence of the discov
ery of novel polymer architectures, nano-sized inorganic materials with unus
ual properties, and composites of organic and inorganic materials. Likewise,
biological processing is expected to play an increasingly important role in
the production of chemicals, as well as health care products. Predicting th
e properties of chemicals from first principles, as a complement to experime
ntal determination, will also become increasingly important in the next cent
ury.


To play a leadership role in shaping the future form of the chemical and rel
ated industries, chemical engineers will need to become familiar with novel
approaches to the synthesis of materials and the use of combinatorial approa
ches for creating libraries of potentially useful products, in addition to t
heir continuing involvement in the use of physical methods for characterizin
g materials at the molecular level and theoretical methods for predicting th
e properties of materials. The integration of such knowledge with that perta
ining to the processing of materials will enable the development of economic
ally viable industrial processes and products.


I believe that chemical engineering programs will need to maintain a strong
emphasis on chemistry at both the undergraduate and gradutate levels. A fami
liarity with biology and biochemistry will also become increasingly importan
t. I also foresee that some of the most exciting research opportunities will
lie at the intersection of chemical engineering with the fields of chemistr
y, biology, and materials science. Examples of such research include the app
lication of quantum chemical methods to predict the physical and chemical pr
operties of catalysts, the use of microscopic and spectroscopic techniques t
o detemine the microstructure of polymers, the use of surface science techni
ques to elucidate fundamental processes occurring during the formation of se
miconducting devices and the behavior of lubricants, the application of reco
mbinant DNA methods for synthesizing biologically derived products, the synt
hesis of nano-sized particles exhibiting unusual optical and magnetic proper
ties, the application of ellipsometric and spectroscopic methods to probe th
e structure of polymer-surface interfaces, and the simulation of plasmas use
d for the deposition and etching of semiconducting devices. These illustrati
ons represent but a small sample of the exciting opportunities for the appli
cations of chemistry by chemical engineers.


ALEXIS T. BELL
Department of Chemical Engineering
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-1462
U.S.A.
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