History Of Chemical Engineering
Posted by admin on June 17, 2009 under General Chemical Engineering | 
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Chemical engineering as a discipline is a little over one hundred years old. It grew out of mechanical engineering in the last part of the 19th century, because of a need for chemical processors. Before the Industrial Revolution (18th century), industrial chemicals were mainly produced through batch processing.
- Batch processing is similar to cooking. Individuals would mix ingredients into a vessel, heat or pressurize the mixture, test it, and purify it to get a salable product.
- Batch processes are still performed today on expensive products, such as perfumes, or pure maple syrups, where one can still turn a profit, despite batch methods being slow and inefficient.
Most chemicals today are produced through a continuous “assembly line” chemical process. The Industrial Revolution was when this shift from batch to continuous processing occurred.
Chemical Engineering Timeline
In 1824, French physicist Sadi Carnot , in his On the Motive Power of Fire was the first to study the thermodynamics of combustion reactions in steam engines .
In the 1850s, German physicist Rudolf Clausius began to apply the principles developed by Carnot to chemical systems at the atomic to molecular scale.
During the years 1873 to 1876 at Yale University , American mathematical physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs , the first to be awarded a Ph.D. in engineering in the U.S., in a series of three papers, developed a mathematical-based, graphical methodology, for the study of chemical systems using the thermodynamics of Clausius.
In 1882, German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz , published a founding thermodynamics paper, similar to Gibbs, but with more of an electro-chemical basis, in which he showed that measure of chemical affinity , i.e. the “force” of chemical reactions , is determined by the measure of the free energy of the reaction process. Following these early developments, the new science of chemical engineering began to develop.
The following timeline shows some of the key steps in the development of the science of chemical engineering:
| 1805 | John Dalton published Atomic Weights, allowing chemical equations to be balanced and the basis for chemical engineering mass balances. |
| 1882 | a course in Chemical Technology is offered at University College London |
| 1883 | Osborne Reynolds defines the dimensionless group for fluid flow, leading to practical scale-up and understanding of flow, heat and mass transfer |
| 1885 | Henry Edward Armstrong offers a course in chemical engineering at Central College (later Imperial College ), London. |
| 1888 | There is a Department of Chemical Engineering at Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College offering day and evening classes. |
| 1888 | Lewis M. Norton starts a new curriculum at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) |
| 1889 | Rose Polytechnic Institute awards the first bachelor’s of science in chemical engineering in the US. |
| 1891 | MIT awards a bachelor’s of science in chemical engineering to William Page Bryant and six other candidates. |
| 1892 | A bachelor’s program in chemical engineering is established at the University of Pennsylvania . |
| 1901 | George E. Davis produces the Handbook of Chemical Engineering |
| 1905 | the University of Wisconsin awards the first Ph.D. in chemical engineering to Oliver Patterson Watts . |
| 1908 | the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) is founded. |
| 1922 | the UK Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) is founded. |
| 1942 | Hilda Derrick, first female student member of the IChemE. |