Industrial Research 



315 



pitifiillj' low. More fundamental research is sorely 

 needed, if these industries are to reach the same high 

 level of chemical engineering efficiency that is common 

 practice in many of the inorganic fields. 



A symposium on "Unit Operations Appraisals," 

 published in May 1934," included a series of technical 

 "balance sheets" in which the known assets of funda- 

 mental data were set down alongside of corresponding 

 liabilities. For heat transfer, flow of fluids, distillation, 

 evaporation, and drying, there was an impressive array 

 of facts and figures on the assets side, balanced against 

 somewhat fewer but stiU serious liabilities. In the case 

 of mixing and agitation, absorption and adsorption, 

 filtration and other mechanical separations, there was 

 an overbalancing list of liabilities — of facts and data yet 

 needed to give a true understanding of underlying 

 theory. 



Some progress has been made by chemical engineers 

 in transferring such liabilities into assets during the past 

 6 years, but there are still too many gaps existing in oiu- 

 theoretical knowledge of the imit operations as T. H. 

 Chilton has clearly shown in his Chandler Medal 

 address^" and in a summary of unsolved problems which 

 he presented before the Chemical Engineering Division 

 of the Society for the Promotion of Chemical Engineer- 

 ing Education in 1938.^' 



Apart from this fundamental study that is so neces- 

 sary and important, there is still a great opportunity for 

 future rewards to those who will carry chemical engi- 

 neering research and development into the older indus- 

 tries that have been slow to accept this relatively new 

 technology. Food-processing, leather, and textile op- 

 erations represent promising fields for this type of culti- 

 vation. The transformation that has been effected in 

 petroleum refining and coal processing, for example, can 

 be duplicated in certain other industries, once their 

 problems are subjected to sound research and the results 

 applied through efficient engineering developments. In 

 this process, the chemical engineer is destined to play 

 an increasingly' important role. The late John Hays 

 Hammond expressed this view in these words : ^^ 



Chemical engineering, more than any other, may lie called the 

 engineering of the future. . . . The chemical engineer stands 

 today on the threshold of a vast virgin realm ; in it lie the secrets 

 of life and prosperity for mankind in the future of the world. 



'• Symposium of unit operations appraisals. Chemical and Metallurgical Engineer- 

 ing, il, ■232 B (May 1934). 



" See footnote 19. 



'1 Chilton, Thomas H. Timely research problems in chemical engineering adapt- 

 able to universities and colleges. Industrial and Engineering Chemiiiry {News Ed.), 

 16, 417-21 (August 10, 1938). 



"Jackson, Dugald C, Jr., and Jones, W. Paul, editors. The profession of engi- 

 neering. New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1929, pp. 114-16. 



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Burke, S. P., and Plummer, W. B. Gas flow through packed 

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Hamor, W. a. Industrial research in 1939. Ibid., IS, 1, 49 

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