Tuesday 7 October 2014

Role of Chemical Engineer in Industry

Not all type of industries have all of the following type of chemical engineers, instead, duties of chemical engineer in a particular industry determines the type of chemical engineer to be hired for that particular duty.
Normally these major type of roles are performed by a chemical engineer :

1) Safety engineer called "Health and Safety Engineer" (or HSE): to ensure the safety of the workers (that is the top priority) and to take an immediate and correct responsive action in case of an accident.

2) Process engineer: in which engineer performs the works related to maintain the existing process in any way possible (but not in the way that is costy, less efficient and unsafe). Process Engineer is required to solve trouble that arises to run the plant to it's full extent for the industry to gain profit from it's product.   is not only required to investigate the creation of new material with desired properties, but also to the way of it's making. Like the economic aspects, safety aspects, process limitations or barriers must be kept in mind.

3) Design Engineer: A design engineer working as a chemical engineer performs the duty of designing the whole process that may involve unit operations and unit processes. It performs designing the engineering equipment (like pressure vessels, distillation column, absorption columns, heat exchangers etc using in the process), Hydraulics calculation (finding the pressure drop in pipeline, pipe fittings, partially opened valves, equipment in the way of the process fluid), Relief Load Calculation (calculating the vapor flow rate to be relieve in case of over-pressure, as in case of fire in a pressure vessel, using a Pressure Safety Valve) and preparation of Process and Instrumentation Diagram or P&ID (in which the diagramatic explanation of the whole process is provided showing all the equipments, pipes, valves, by pass line and valves, PSVs and they also including design and operating pressures and temperatures of all the equipments, pipe dia, pipe class, pipe fluid, pipe number, valve dia and type of valve, etc is provided).

4) Research Engineer: A chemical engineer can also performs the research work in Research and Development department of and industry, to conduct research in order to make their product more efficient, more economic and more competitive.

All other type of roles of chemical engineer like shift engineer, maintainance engineer etc are the sub-branches of these roles.

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