Chemical Engineering Principles & Practice I
Your foundation in chemical engineering — from process streams and unit operations to sustainability and careers.
The profession, industries, and what engineers actually do
Chemical engineering is the discipline that designs processes to transform raw materials — petroleum, natural gas, biomass, air, water — into useful products through chemical and physical transformations. About 30,000 refined chemicals and consumer products (plastics, pharmaceuticals, dyes, cosmetics, semiconductors) trace back to roughly 10 raw materials via ~20 basic intermediates. The chemical engineer asks: what are the key physical, chemical, mathematical, and engineering principles that enable the design of clean, energy-efficient, sustainable, and economical processes?
All manufactured goods trace back through a hierarchy: raw materials → basic products → intermediates → refined chemicals and consumer products. Understanding this tree tells you where chemical engineers intervene.
Petroleum, natural gas, coal, biomass, rock, salt, phosphate, sulfur, air, and water are the primary feedstocks for the entire chemical industry. Chemical engineers design the processes that unlock value from these materials.
Ethylene, propene, butadiene, benzene, synthesis-gas, ammonia, sulfuric acid, sodium hydroxide, chlorine. These are produced at enormous scale and feed into hundreds of downstream processes.
Methanol, vinyl chloride, styrene, urea, formaldehyde, ethylene oxide, acetic acid, acrylonitrile, cyclohexane, acrylic acid — each the subject of entire process plants.
Plastics, pharmaceuticals, dyes, solvents, fertilizers, fibres, cosmetics, computer chips, antiseptics (Dettol), adhesives (Scotch tape). Every one of these required a chemical engineer to design the manufacturing process.
Q1.For a steady-state process with no reaction, which balance equation is correct?