Ingenieria quimiaca

e d u c a t i o n f o r c h e m i c a l e n g i n e e r s 3 ( 2 0 0 8 ) e22–e27

available at www.sciencedirect.com

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ece

Trends in chemical engineering education: Process, product and sustainable chemical engineering challenges
Eric Favre ∗ , V´ ronique Falk, Christine Roizard, Eric Schaer e
ENSIC, Nancy Universit´ , 1 rue Grandville, 54001Nancy, France e

a r t i c l e
Article history:

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Teaching chemical engineering has always been faced with a dilemma: either keep in touch with industry needs or incorporate new scientific concepts into the curriculum. In this paper, a short historical analysis of the evolution of chemical engineering teaching is presented and the recent trends of the two previous facets(industry and science) are briefly reviewed. The process vs product engineering concept is proposed as one of the means to achieve

Received 25 October 2007 Accepted 17 December 2007

Keywords: Product Process Engineering Sustainable chemistry Education History

a better alignment between the curriculum and industry needs. A chemical engineering teaching framework, based in part on a productand a process oriented component, which has been in place in our department 5 years ago, is described and discussed. The concept of sustainable chemistry, including process and product considerations, which can be seen as the next frontier in chemical engineering education, is finally analysed from the education point of view. © 2008 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V.All rights reserved.

1.

Introduction

Chemical engineering can be broadly defined as the branch of engineering that deals with the application of sciences (e.g., mathematics, chemistry and physics) to the process of converting raw materials or chemicals into more useful or valuable products in an economical and sustainable manner (i.e., simultaneously managing resources, protecting theenvironment and controlling health and safety procedures). This somehow dual character of the discipline, which combines a scientific facet together with a more pragmatic one (i.e., solving the problems of industry), is represented in Fig. 1. Similarly to a tree that grows thanks to two nutrient inlets (e.g., roots and leaves), a schematic plant pattern has been used in order to show the scientificroots, which, together with the industry needs and challenges, contribute to the enlargement of the trunk (i.e., the core of our discipline). The dual character, which can be proposed as a generic one for every engineering domain, was highlighted by Danckwerts (1966). When one goes back to the historical evolution of chemical engineering, it can be seen that the discipline and the core curriculumhave reacted to stimuli both from science

and industry. Table 1 tentatively summarizes what could be considered as the landmarks of the discipline. It can be seen that industry or society needs, such as energy, environment, or nanotechnology, participate together with evolution of the scientific tools, to drive the changes. Paradigms in chemical engineering education have been proposed in order toattest to the major changes in the discipline. Unit operations are often considered as the first unifying paradigm of chemical engineering, (Colton, 1991; Wei, 1996; Hougen, 1977). The second paradigm appeared in 1960 with the book of Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot entitled “Transport phenomena” (Bird et al., 1960). Today, the second paradigm is as old as the first one was when this book was publishedand the chemical engineering community is still searching for the elusive third paradigm (Wei, 1996; Mashelkar, 1995; Landau, 1997). The needs of modern society, getting closer to the practices in industry, multiscale approach, biology, nanotechnology and manufacturing efficiency are all held out as promising challenges from which novel concepts could emerge (Astarita, 1990; Brown and Mashelkar,...