How Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Design Combine

 How Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Design Combine

 

It is well known that Mechanical Design plays an important role in today's world of engineering, but did you know that Chemical Engineering also plays an equally important role? What is the connection between these two fields? How do they work together? How do they affect each other's work and lives? This article will address these questions, and it will give you more insight into how the two of them fit together. (Note: 10% of this article will be Mechanical Design only).

 

What is Chemical Engineering?

Chemical engineering is a branch of multidisciplinary engineering that uses the principles of chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, and economics to develop solutions to technological problems. Chemical engineers design chemical plants in which materials are converted into thousands of different products that are used everywhere in our lives. In fact, we cannot survive without chemicals — plastics made on our computers would be useless without chemical engineers!

 

What Is Mechanical Design?

In the construction of machinery, engineers combine form and labor to build machines or tools that solve problems. They turn resources into tools that users can use to simplify their lives, make work more efficient or save lives. The field of mechanical engineering is so extensive that there are hundreds of different types of work within it, including the design of cars, aircraft, and ships; building robots; manufacturing computer chips; creating medical devices; developing new medicines for pharmaceutical companies; exploring other sources of energy such as solar energy; working on property management on major projects such as bridges and buildings; many more.

 

Examples of where mechanical engineering and chemical engineering combine

Companies involved in the production of a chemical product or part of a chemical product will use design engineers to help them develop the equipment to build their product. For example, oil refineries produce products such as gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, jet fuel, and other petroleum products. To make these products each refinery requires large pieces of equipment called distillation towers that perform many functions. Distillation towers are mechanical machines in which heat is applied to a mixture and causes different components within the mixture to transfer from one phase (liquid) to another (gas). The gases emitted from water filtration towers at temperatures above 100 degrees Celsius are valuable to some potential users. As a result, there is a market for machines called condensers that quickly cool these gases to be collected and sold as liquids.