When Gus Fring drove Walter White to the hidden meth lab in the laundry facility, he said to him: "This is your new lab (...). You will have excellent help, as I had". And it was true. Gale Boetticher came along, a methodical, brilliant organic chemist. This stroke me: the help was not a Chemical Engineer. The job of scaling a 2-kg-per-week production up to 90 is supposed to be the job of a Chemical Engineer.
**
Years ago, when I was a sophomore or a junior student of Bachelor's degree, someone asked me to give a presentation to A-level students about what Chemical Engineering was about. It is not that I knew much what I was talking about then, as I am not sure I know now, but I found an old manual with a first, whole chapter explaining the difference between Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Since then, my ballad has been the repetition of the message in that chapter: the job of a Ch. Eng. is to bring a lab production to an industrial, profitable scale.
**
I want to believe that this is still the job of Chemical Engineers in industry or somewhere else beyond the rainbow, because it is certainly not what Ch. Eng. Departments do in universities. The Chemical Engineering has ceased to be an engineering discipline with large-scale concerns there and has bent the microscope down on the science underneath more or less applied industrial processes which, by the way, are becoming smaller and smaller every year (nano-stuff, you know).
It seems that the third generation of Chemical Engineers, the first one entire and solely academic (circa 1950s) are to hold responsible for initiating the transformation. From that moment on, practically all text books landed on the scientific aspects of industrial operations and stop reflecting the practice of the profession (D.C. Freshwater, 1988). Countless highways for research in these directions opened. Most of the books are very good though and for me the Bird, Steward and Lightfoot Transport Phenomena (1st edition in 1960, I think) is a super-classic, unsurpassed wonder.
In 1988 N. A. Peppas, from Purdue, edited in the form of book a collection of articles reviewing the history of Chemical Engineering in different universities (and from several points of view) along the previous 100 years. The book, One Hundred Years of Chemical Engineering, has fallen in my hands quite unexpectedly. Very recently I had the fortune to gather myself over a hundred of books given away as gratuitous stubble because of refurbishing works in the Departmental library at UCL (!). Of course, the library is no longer a library, but it will be my pleasure to do the honors privately.
Peppas book reflects the transition towards the Chemical Engineering Science in different places. Don C. Freshwater, from Louisiana State University did actually not like the change at all and he is quite blunt in his judgments (I have to say that I agree with him). Peppas himself is much more moderate, but also presents the Hollister Report (1952) as an abrupt change in the road: "the report was only thirty-six pages long. It was polite to the older tradition, but firm in its recommendations to the new generation".
As far as I am concerned, I see the study of the science underneath the Unit Operations and Chemical Reactors as a fundamental must in the education of the Chemical Engineer. But I mean it. In the days of the transition, important mathematicians contributed remarkably to the new developments, such as the great Rutherford Aris. It was a difficult, mathematical accomplishment. Its study, a titanic, individual struggle. Curricula nowadays, however, contain little if any Math; little, if any Chemistry. And team work and group project are praised way more than individual effort... (!?) What do you think: that industrial engineers did not work together in the 20s, 30s or 50s, as they do today? What does exactly this bullshit come from?
ODEs and PDEs are something of singular proportions for the common advisor (lest the student), residues of old, abandoned courses, only rescued with no fully-understanding if unavoidable for the purposes of specific, applied research; for the same, a change of coordinates, the use of the Jacobian or a triple integral are exotic operations. As for the Chemistry, I think I have mentioned it here before: Chemical Engineer graduates cannot locate Al in the periodic table (leave alone, Mn or V or Ni, fundamental stones of alloys). Smart phones will do that for them and that will be called "smart use of modern technology", clap, clap, clap: you can set your brains to change the world, now. If you ask the common advisor to write down the molecular formula of acetone, be prepared: "it's been ages since I studied this, hihi". If one of their students dumps acetone through the drain, just like that, they won't see it much as a very important matter. Etc. What kind of Chemical Engineering is that? What kind of Science? What kind of scientists?
Furthermore, I believe the place of the Chemical Engineer belongs to industry, to production. The old discipline was initiated by an industrial inspector in Manchester -G. E. Davis-, a man able to enjoy the very details of his job who felt himself impelled to share them. That is the inextinguishable flame of the true teacher and master. In spite of the fact that a great deal of scientific generality can be found and applied across very different processes, there is no substitution for experience. You need to see to believe, to understand, to grasp. The only wisdom comes from professional experience. But, alas! Wisdom, knowledge do not matter. The number of mentors in Ch. Eng Academia is meager nowadays, the intellectual production unimportant. The soil and harvest of universitary Chemical Engineering is a barren plain.
**
If Breaking Bad had been a success in the 50s, Gale Boetticher would have been a Chemical Engineer.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
**
Years ago, when I was a sophomore or a junior student of Bachelor's degree, someone asked me to give a presentation to A-level students about what Chemical Engineering was about. It is not that I knew much what I was talking about then, as I am not sure I know now, but I found an old manual with a first, whole chapter explaining the difference between Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Since then, my ballad has been the repetition of the message in that chapter: the job of a Ch. Eng. is to bring a lab production to an industrial, profitable scale.
**
I want to believe that this is still the job of Chemical Engineers in industry or somewhere else beyond the rainbow, because it is certainly not what Ch. Eng. Departments do in universities. The Chemical Engineering has ceased to be an engineering discipline with large-scale concerns there and has bent the microscope down on the science underneath more or less applied industrial processes which, by the way, are becoming smaller and smaller every year (nano-stuff, you know).
It seems that the third generation of Chemical Engineers, the first one entire and solely academic (circa 1950s) are to hold responsible for initiating the transformation. From that moment on, practically all text books landed on the scientific aspects of industrial operations and stop reflecting the practice of the profession (D.C. Freshwater, 1988). Countless highways for research in these directions opened. Most of the books are very good though and for me the Bird, Steward and Lightfoot Transport Phenomena (1st edition in 1960, I think) is a super-classic, unsurpassed wonder.
In 1988 N. A. Peppas, from Purdue, edited in the form of book a collection of articles reviewing the history of Chemical Engineering in different universities (and from several points of view) along the previous 100 years. The book, One Hundred Years of Chemical Engineering, has fallen in my hands quite unexpectedly. Very recently I had the fortune to gather myself over a hundred of books given away as gratuitous stubble because of refurbishing works in the Departmental library at UCL (!). Of course, the library is no longer a library, but it will be my pleasure to do the honors privately.
Peppas book reflects the transition towards the Chemical Engineering Science in different places. Don C. Freshwater, from Louisiana State University did actually not like the change at all and he is quite blunt in his judgments (I have to say that I agree with him). Peppas himself is much more moderate, but also presents the Hollister Report (1952) as an abrupt change in the road: "the report was only thirty-six pages long. It was polite to the older tradition, but firm in its recommendations to the new generation".
As far as I am concerned, I see the study of the science underneath the Unit Operations and Chemical Reactors as a fundamental must in the education of the Chemical Engineer. But I mean it. In the days of the transition, important mathematicians contributed remarkably to the new developments, such as the great Rutherford Aris. It was a difficult, mathematical accomplishment. Its study, a titanic, individual struggle. Curricula nowadays, however, contain little if any Math; little, if any Chemistry. And team work and group project are praised way more than individual effort... (!?) What do you think: that industrial engineers did not work together in the 20s, 30s or 50s, as they do today? What does exactly this bullshit come from?
ODEs and PDEs are something of singular proportions for the common advisor (lest the student), residues of old, abandoned courses, only rescued with no fully-understanding if unavoidable for the purposes of specific, applied research; for the same, a change of coordinates, the use of the Jacobian or a triple integral are exotic operations. As for the Chemistry, I think I have mentioned it here before: Chemical Engineer graduates cannot locate Al in the periodic table (leave alone, Mn or V or Ni, fundamental stones of alloys). Smart phones will do that for them and that will be called "smart use of modern technology", clap, clap, clap: you can set your brains to change the world, now. If you ask the common advisor to write down the molecular formula of acetone, be prepared: "it's been ages since I studied this, hihi". If one of their students dumps acetone through the drain, just like that, they won't see it much as a very important matter. Etc. What kind of Chemical Engineering is that? What kind of Science? What kind of scientists?
Furthermore, I believe the place of the Chemical Engineer belongs to industry, to production. The old discipline was initiated by an industrial inspector in Manchester -G. E. Davis-, a man able to enjoy the very details of his job who felt himself impelled to share them. That is the inextinguishable flame of the true teacher and master. In spite of the fact that a great deal of scientific generality can be found and applied across very different processes, there is no substitution for experience. You need to see to believe, to understand, to grasp. The only wisdom comes from professional experience. But, alas! Wisdom, knowledge do not matter. The number of mentors in Ch. Eng Academia is meager nowadays, the intellectual production unimportant. The soil and harvest of universitary Chemical Engineering is a barren plain.
**
If Breaking Bad had been a success in the 50s, Gale Boetticher would have been a Chemical Engineer.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
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