Ecological Engineering and Sustainability:A New Opportunity for Chemical Engineering

摘要

In its short history,chemical engineering has moved far beyond the bulk production of commodity chemicals that first motivated the discipline's development.The concept of"unit operations"enabled chemical engineers to"see"the underlying similarity of,for example,separating alcohol from water in a fermenter,and separating gasoline from diesel in a refinery.The identification of the fundamental unit operations allowed chemical engineering to focus on the processes as opposed to the product,which in turn has enabled the discipline to move into a multitude of new directions.