Perspectives on manufacturing innovations in Chemical Engineering

The future manufacturing technologies for producing chemicals will be done in efficient, distributed, modular process equipment where multiphase flows are ubiquitous. Our traditional design approach has been to rely on rules of thumb and pilot-scale testing of process equipment. This approach takes up to 20 years to develop a single technology. The high degree of freedom, available at the early stages of design, is wasted by making ad-hoc decisions that are not necessarily optimal. In this presentation, I address the question, “Can advanced computational modeling framework come to our rescue in modernizing and innovating chemical manufacturing processes?” In answering this question, the history of chemical engineering education will be traced to identify the crystalizing moments that enabled its broad application to many manufacturing sectors such as pharmaceuticals, food, electro, and biochemical processes. Now its application is even being extended to human health.