What Does a Chemical Engineer Do? Careers in Science & Engineering

The model predicted that this would take 75 minutes at the large scale, right? What makes soap, soap? It takes a huge amount of people to launch a product and get that on the shelf. I realized that being a chemical engineer didn't just mean chemistry or didn't just mean math. It meant creating things and on so many different levels and for so many different kinds of products. Chemical engineers like Anita combine the principles of chemistry and engineering to scale up the production of materials and consumer products. They work in teams with other engineers, designing and adapting production methods from the small scale in the lab to the large scale at the manufacturing plant. Everything that touches your life, a chemical engineer had to be there to make it happen. And just knowing that I could be a part of that. Chemical engineers work in a variety of fields. Energy, pharmaceuticals, the environment, biotechnology, consumer products and a lot more. It's taking a product and making it for everyone. Anita is a chemical engineer with Procter & Gamble. I work in fabric care engineering on the liquids making side. I work on designing and putting in new equipment in the plant or maybe modifying some old equipment to make new products. Somebody in the products research side or somebody that talks to consumers will come up with an idea. So what they love is for the product in the bottle to smell great. They also talked about how when they go into their laundry room they love the smell of that fresh scent and pulling it out of their dryer and being able to smell it. As we're going and investing in the project we want to make sure that whatever we do is what the consumer wants. Chemical engineers are instrumental early on in the process especially during the research and development phase. You've made it in a beaker and that's really cool. But we know we need to make it into many, many, many bottles. Thousands of bottles that we can get to the consumers every day. So how do we scale that up? With our computer modeling tools what we've done is we're simulating the injection of this material into our product. So we're showing that it's really well mixed right now and I think that's going to be really important for us making our design requirements that we know we can get this. Now we can see the rotational movement of the agitator drawing the fluid down just like the model predicts. Yeah, I can see it going around getting mixed. Right, and we can see that the strands are breaking up and being drawn down into the fluid and after a few minutes we should see the material dissolve. When Anita's not meeting with her R&D colleagues in Cincinnati she's usually working at one of Procter & Gamble's manufacturing sites. Anita is brainstorming with Lauren, another chemical engineer, planning the scale-up of a new product. This tank right here is free. We'll probably have to do some changes inside. What kind of material properties does this have? So we're thinking this is going to be a kind of thick material and we're going to plan to inject it back into our formulas. We want to make sure it's homogenous. Okay, so we're looking at an agitator, maybe a top-mounted or side-mounted one? It looks like the top-mounted is what we're going to want. That's how we're avoiding phase separation right now. I picked chemical engineering because it's the most versatile. I can work in product supply, I can work in environment, I can work in the energy sector, I can work in chemical production. I have so many options. You work all day and you produce these things but then you go to the store and you see it on the shelf and you're like, oh, well see, I made that. And my mom will call me up and she'll be like, did you make this new thing? It's awesome. And I'm like, yeah, I did. During the day I'm a chemical engineer but once I go home I like to do a lot of other things too. I've learned how to cook and I like trying different recipes out and sharing them with my friends. I like to do different types of art. I paint and I do draw. I think one of the most exciting things about my work is it's not just one project. So they might be in different phases. So after several months of options analysis we have gotten alignment from our GM on a base plan for this project. As chemical engineers design their projects they take into account consumer preferences, implementation costs, and especially plant safety. We're working on a noise study. We measured what the sound was actually using the site's official decibel meter because we did want to get that recorded. We had it custom made for soundproofing. We need noise cancellation. I would research that. Chemical engineers also make sure their designs are environmentally sustainable. We're thinking that the batch cycle time is going to take about 75 minutes after unload. Okay, so we want to try to get that reduced as much as possible if they can. Everything in life is about chemistry and we need to understand how to control it and make it work. And make it work in a clean, green, and efficient way. Sustainability is a huge thing now. Chemical engineers typically have a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. And some go on to receive a master's degree in chemical engineering. But being an engineer isn't just about math and science. You do want to have a good basis in other things like history and English and being able to communicate well. You have to think a little bit outside the box. I think the most rewarding thing about being a chemical engineer is that you can see what you make. Being creative is being an engineer.