What is Chemical Engineering?

A chemical engineer is someone who knows enough physics/mechanics to confuse a chemist, enough chemistry to confuse a physicist/mechanical engineer and enough mathematics to confuse himself.

In Layman's term, Chemical Engineer is a guy that helps in production of things at a large level. He is one who studies processes, design a plant and equipment and also runs the plant.  

Suppose you have a secret Lemonade recipe which is admired by everyone. Now you want to commercialize it i.e. you want to sold it at a very large level. Now the process will involve many steps like taking juice out of lemons, mixing that juice with water, mixing sugar and your secret ingredient etc. You obviously has no idea how to do it? So a chemical or process engineer will come to your rescue. It will design a process  i.e. he/she will tell you that first crushing of Lemons will take place then juice will be mixed in a agitator tank etc. After that he/she will design equipment for this process. When plant is setup, he/she will also help to run it. 

Thus Chemical engineering is most exciting field to major in. It beautifully blends physics, chemistry and mathematics. A chemical engineer is somewhat between mechanical engineer and chemist having a sound knowledge of mathematics. 

Chemical engineers SCALE UP the chemical reactions performed in laboratory to produce the desired chemical on a industrial scale (in a economical way). Now to do this one has to have a understanding of - micro, meso and macro scale processes, which is taught during the course. 

Interestingly a lot of mathematics is involved, than one would normally think, while studying chemical engineering. People generally think that Chemical engineering involves a lot of chemistry but it is not so. Thermodynamics and Kinetics are covered extensively. Reaction engineering (which is covered kinetics) makes it different from other branches of engineering. 

Broadly Chemical Engineering can be classified into 2 groups - 

• Designing, manufacturing and operating plants and related machinery and processes - Chemical Process Engineers.  
• Development of new or adapted substances for products ranging from pharma industry to automobiles to cosmetic industry - Chemical Product Engineers. 

Chemical engineers basically study mass,heat and momentum balance. There are wide array of subjects which a chemical engineer studies during his undergrad. The wide spectrum of specialization makes this a very promising field in term of careers.  They usually specializes in one of the following subjects - 

• Process Modelling and Simulation
• Computer Aided Design
• Reaction Engineering
• Control and Optimization
• Safety and Hazard Analysis
• Computational Fluid dynamics, Rheology, Fluid Mechanics
• Separation Processes
• Thermodynamics
• Bioprocess and food engineering
• Pollution and control
• Nanotechnology
• Material Science
• Bio-engineering
• Transport Phenomena
• Catalysis 
• Energy Studies

Thus chemical engineer touch everyone's life right from start of the day till night. So if you want to make new products and help mankind chemical engineering is right for you.