Are chemical engineers people who wear white lab coats and mix solutions in test tubes? Not really. Career Central tells you what chemical engineers really do.

By Denise Chew

When you put toothpaste on your toothbrush, apply lipstick or top-up your car with petrol, do you think about how these products come about? To varying extents, these products are the works of chemical engineering.

Chemical engineering was founded about a century ago, when the demands of society for chemical products together with our modern lifestyle enforced major evolutions in the chemical industry. Chemical engineering is the design, scale up, operation and optimization of processes by which chemicals, petroleum products, food, pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods can be produced economically and safely.

What do chemical engineers do?
Chemical engineers work in process plants which convert raw materials to valuable finished products. But the plants also fall “sick” from time to time, and are unable to perform a designed specification. This is where chemical engineers step in as doctors, to diagnose the illness and prescribe a solution. This could just be injecting specialized chemicals or adjusting some critical process parameters. In more serious instances, the plant has to be shut down for equipment to be repaired and replaced.

Chemical engineers have to look for ways to make improvements to the process plant, pushing it in front of the competition, much like horse trainers. They have to find ways to enhance its performance by identifying opportunities for improvement, weaknesses and proposing solutions. In the competitive business of oil refining, breakthrough plant performance, reliability and the ability to make profit in depressed times, differentiate a top class refinery from its rivals.

With stricter global policies on pollution, chemical engineers have to put on their architect hats and work with research scientists to design plants which are safer and friendlier to the environment. These plants also have to give more for the same kind of input and produce less waste with minimum capital investment.

Chemical engineers also analyse business trends like economists, and find ways to maximise profits to keep the plant in line with business goals. The aim is to make the most money with the existing equipment. For instance, if there is a growing demand for a certain chemical, a chemical engineer must anticipate it in advance so that he can be pro-active in making the necessary changes to the plant before what it produces becomes worthless in the market.

Chemical engineers are the people with the overall picture of the chemical process, from start to end. With this knowledge, they coordinate and work with engineers in other specialised areas like electrical and civil engineering, and also with other departments in the company like marketing, supply planning and logistics. Hence, they can better identify opportunities for improvements, maximise margins and improve plant efficiency and reliability.

Where can you fi nd chemical engineers?
The skills of chemical Engineers are required in any industry that needs to design and operate processes for mass production. You can fi nd chemical engineers in oil refi ning (Shell, ExxonMobil, British Petroleum), petrochemicals (BASF, Du Pont), pharmaceuticals (GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer), environmental (Hyflux), food (Cadbury), fine chemicals (Proctor & Gamble), semiconductors (Chartered) and even milk processing.

Chemical engineering as a career
Industry-specifi c process knowledge
Chemical engineers add value through their knowledge of processes. But these are very industry-specific. As fresh hires, they require more onthe-job training to equip them with working knowledge. If they move to another industry, they will have to pick up knowledge of that particular industry even though some core knowledge is the same. In general, if they move from a complex industry, like oil refining to a simpler one, like milk-processing, it will be easier to adapt than vice versa.

Process knowledge and career progression
Chemical engineers can choose to remain in a technical track, remaining in plant operations and perhaps becoming a trainer and expert in their area. But since chemical engineers understand the big picture, they can also be pulled into other departments within the company, for example, marketing and business development, because they know how the entire plant works. This would mean more exposure and opportunities, and a wider job scope. Their grounding would also give them a good foundation to move to a management track. In fact, many board directors in the oil majors are former engineers.

Not a glamourous job
Being a chemical engineer is not glamorous. Process plants are usually located away from the city. Putting on overalls, going down on your knees and getting dirty is also part of the job. So, the job is not for people who want to work in a dressed-up business district, with the convenience of a Starbucks and shopping centres in the vicinity.

Ratio of men to women
Traditionally engineering is a male dominated industry. However, there are more women in chemical engineering, compared to the other engineering disciplines, as it is viewed as a “softer” field. One of the senior chemical engineers interviewed has six female engineers working under him, out of a total of eight engineers. Another engineer’s previous two supervisors were both women.

How much does a chemical engineer earn?
Chemical engineers between the ages of 25 to 29 years old in the petroleum industry earned an average monthly wage of $4,370, according to the Ministry of Manpower’s 2004 Occupational Wages Survey. The graduate employment survey of the 2005 graduating Chemical Engineering class at NUS also showed that graduates received an average gross monthly salary of about $2,600.

The future of chemical engineering in Singapore
The chemical industry has been a major part of the Singapore economy for many years, based on Singapore’s strong foundation as a major oil refining centre — the third largest in the world.
The demand for chemical engineers looks bright due to the following factors:

• In recent years, the chemical process industries manufacturing such products as petrochemicals, industrial gases, solvents and resins, specialty chemicals and pharmaceuticals, have assumed an increasingly important role in the local manufacturing sector.
• The environmental technology sector has seen major growth in Asia.
• A world-class chemical industry cluster is being developed on Jurong Island.
• Multi-national corporations such as Du Pont, ExxonMobil, Hoechst GE, ICI, Shell and many others have manufacturing and marketing operations in Singapore.

Looking even further ahead to the future, alternative fuels like hydrogen, wind and biofuel are still in development. When these become economically viable, this will potentially create another sector with demand for chemical engineers.

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