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National Resources Planning Board 



accompany it, fonn an essential part of successful 

 development work. 



Dr. M. C. Whitaker, vice president of the American 

 Cyanamid Company, calls attention to the direct con- 

 tribution the chemical engineer can often make by 

 advising research men as to the feasibility of proposed 

 operations as well as by helping them to design special 

 types of laboratory equipment required for this work. 

 In a private communication, he writes as follows: 



Chemical engineers fit into our research and development pro- 

 gram from the time the job leaves the research laboratory until 

 the customer has bought our goods and actually used them up in 

 his own operations. In other words, chemical engineers take 

 the laboratory processes, and with the assistance of the research 

 chemists they design, develop, and operate pilot plants for ex- 

 perimental production. Then, on the basis of this experience, 

 they design and install the full-scale production equipment, 

 direct the operation of the plants, collaborate with the sales 

 department in the introduction of the new materials, and, finally, 

 instruct the customer in his application and use of the end 

 products of our research. 



This haison function of the chemical engineers is 

 becoming more and more important in modern industry. 

 This is especially true La the larger companies where 

 the transition from the laboratory to the pilot plant 

 and from semiworks to full-scale production is often 

 between different departments or widely separated 

 plants. In a small plant, however, which can employ 

 only one or two chemical engineers, there is not likely 

 to be any such well-defmed division of duties. Here the 

 chemical engineer must not only do the pilot-plant work 

 but may be responsible for designing, building, and 

 even operating the commercial plant. 



In general, however, most companies try to divorce 

 research from plant operation not only because the 

 latter is a full-time job but also because it generally 

 calls for quite different qualifications. Nevertheless, 

 some very successful companies make it a practice to 

 start their young chemical engineers at the bottom of a 

 development group and, after they have advanced to 

 the point where they can undertake it, to assign them to 

 a problem through the design, construction, and operat- 

 ing steps, and finally make them operating heads of 

 the process. 



The American Potash and Chemical Corporation fol- 

 lows a modification of this procedure. Its research 

 director, Mr. W. A. Gale writes: 



On new developments we usually assign the investigation to 

 some one man who will be expected to carry the problem, if all 

 goes well, through all the various stages of preliminary develop- 

 ment. The detailed design and construction of the commercial 

 plant is handled by the engineering department, but the research 

 and development department must develop the preliminary 

 design and specifications, such as volumes of material to be 

 handled, quantities of heat to be transferred, and general type 

 of equipment and flow sheet arrangement, and must prepare 

 preliminary estimates of operating costs. Then when the plant 

 is finally built, the research man will know more about it than 



almost anyone else, so he will be given a large part in supervising 

 the testing, training of the crew, and preliminary operations 

 until such time as the plant is turned over to the production de- 

 partment as a smoothly operating unit. For this work we find 

 that a man with good chemical-engineering training is much 

 more useful to us than a man who has been trained just as a 

 chemist or physicist. 



The Pilot Plant 



The true habitat of the chemical engineer is in what 

 David E. Pierce,* of Charles Lennig and Company, has 

 called the "halfway house of industry" — the semiworks 

 or pilot plant in which is determined the success or 

 failure of most new processes. Here, halfway between 

 the test-tube research and full-scale operations, the 

 chemical engineer finds his greatest opportunity. It is 

 his function to study a new process, to check its be- 

 havior imder plant conditions, and to perfect the 

 design and construction of the equipment before the 

 project is ready for commercial production. Dr. L. H. 

 Baekeland is usually credited with the advice "Make 

 your mistakes on the small scale and your profits on 

 the large." 



Pierce has summarized the four functions of the 

 semiworks plant as follows: 



1. To study new processes or new types of 

 equipment in order to secure data for plant design ; 



2. To study proposed variations in old processes 

 in order to increase yield or quality, or to improve 

 the design of equipment ; 



3. To make sample batches of new products for 

 introduction to the trade; and 



4. To manufacture for sale new or special prod- 

 ucts for which the demand is not yet large enough 

 to justify full-scale plant operations. 



University and Institutional Research 



Not all chemical engineers in research and develop- 

 ment work arc directly employed in industry. Many 

 are in the universities where an increasing volume of 

 both fundamental and apphed research work is being 

 done. As will be noted later, the chemical engineer's 

 direct contribution to fundamental research is largely 

 confined to studies of the physical and chemical factors 

 affecting the unit operations and processes. Such 

 investigations are concerned with advances in theory 

 and knowledge of the underlying principles. Only 

 recently has there developed any appreciable need in 

 university research organizations for chemical engineers 

 who are proficient in pilot-plant design and operation. 



This situation does not necessarily obtain in some of 

 the public and privately endowed research institutions. 

 Governmental departments, as exemplified in the set-up 

 of the foiu" new regional laboratories of the United 



• pierce, David E. The half-way bouse. American Inslitule of Chemical Engineers, 

 Tiansactions, 19, 100-Ul (1933). 



