Chemical & Process Engineering Research Resources

Chemical and process engineering research covers how matter and energy are transformed and moved at industrial scale: reactors, separations, heat and mass transfer, fluid and particle handling, process control and the safety of all of it. The Institution of Chemical Engineers was founded in 1922 and reports around 30,000 members; the American Institute of Chemical Engineers dates from 1908 and reports more than 60,000 members in over 110 countries; DECHEMA in Frankfurt dates from 1926. The European Federation of Chemical Engineering divides the field into 19 working parties and 8 sections, from Crystallization and Mixing to Process Intensification and Electrochemical Engineering, and IChemE runs 20 special interest groups.

Funding in the United States runs largely through the National Science Foundation's CBET division, whose core programmes are Chemical Process Systems, Engineering Biological and Biomedical Systems, Energy, Water and Resource Engineering, and Transport Phenomena. Journals include Chemical Engineering Science (Elsevier, since 1951) and the AIChE titles AIChE Journal, Chemical Engineering Progress and Process Safety Progress. Evaluated data come from sources such as the NIST Standard Reference Data programme, which offers 49 free and 41 fee-based databases, and the NIST Chemistry WebBook. Preprints go to ChemRxiv, run by the ACS, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the German Chemical Society.

Safety and regulation shape almost every project. Someone entering the area should expect to meet OSHA's process safety management standard (29 CFR 1910.119), the EPA Risk Management Program under Clean Air Act section 112(r), IEC 61511 for safety instrumented systems, HAZOP studies under IEC 61882, and piping and instrumentation diagrams drawn to ISA 5.1 and ISO 10628 symbols. The specialisations below take up reactors, separations, property data, mixing, solids, control, intensification, electrochemical processes and carbon capture.