Intro to Chemical Engineering Lecture Pt. 5

This guy is Peter Wilson.  He is actually Edwin Drake’s druggist and apparently this is a picture of the one of the very first drug deals.  You see his pants are quite full of something here and we’re not quite sure what’s going on.  Then there are these three stooges back here.

This is a derrick.  What happened to Pennsylvania is that people have noticed a sort of black stuff coming to the surface of the ground.  They also found out that if they lit it with fire, it would burn.  So he went poking around to see where this stuff was coming from and that was the first oil well.  And this was of course, in a sense, the beginning of chemical engineering.  Because chemical engineers originated, if you will, as a species that is to basically take oil which is a very, very complex set of nasty molecules and refine them into liquids and gases that are of use to society.  It could be methane, propane, ethane, butane, pentane and finally when you get to heptane and on up, this stuff becomes liquid at room temperature and they found out that if you took this stuff and boiled it, you could fractionate it into liquids and gases.  The gases could be used as fuels and the stuff that is really nasty, the tar could be put on to roads and this gave rise to this profession of chemical engineering as the people who refine oil.

Now, I have to tell you that probably in the last 20 years, not one of our undergraduates has gone into the oil business.  This is how it started, but we’ve transcended it.  It’s not that we do not refine oil anymore, we do, but we put in much figured out how to design oil refineries, essentially using software and computer programs that have imbedded in them the smartness to handle a variety of crudes and to produce products over the year that meet the market demands and so as you will learn on Friday, during the summer, the refineries are making heating oils for the winter and during winter, they are making gasolines for the summer.  And so the crude oil stream gets in and it gets changed molecularly into products that meet the market demand.  So it is not to demean refineries or to say that it’s a bad idea to go work for an oil company, but few of our graduates tend to do that.  I will talk about some of the other places where they do go. But that is for historical purposes.

What is Chemical Engineering?  It really is taking basis sciences: Physics, Math, Chemistry and now Biology, and applying them to the conversion of raw materials into valuable products.  It started out with crude oil into valuable products.  Doing it with a respect for the environment, which I can tell you was not in the picture for many, many years.  In fact, we are still litigating and I do participate in litigations of people who behave poorly in how they disposed of materials, even as latest as 1980s and early 1990s. Thinking that the world is a waste basket that can sup up anything we throw into it, but it is simply not the case anymore.

Chemical engineers design and manufacture useful products and this is done through chemical reactions, making and breaking bonds.  Usually when I get to this point, when I talk about catalysis, accelerating chemical reactions, separating and purifying things, people get scared.  They ask me, “Is there any Chemistry in this class?”  My answer to this is, “What don’t you understand about the word Chemical Engineering?”  I mean it is sort of taking an English class and learning Spanish.  Yes, we are going to talk about chemistry in here.  Is it deep chemistry?  It is not going to be deep chemistry.  It is something that you can all handle if you got three fully simultaneously functioning neurons at any given point in time.

So what do I mean by converting raw materials into products?  I will give you some examples.  We talked about crude oil.  There are refineries in the North Bay, up by Martinez, if you are familiar in that area.  There is also a big one along Highway 80 just north of Berkeley.  These will deal with around 100,000 barrels a day of crude oil coming in and running 24 hours a day.

Do anyone know how many gallons in a barrel?  55 in the kind of barrel that you normally see.  But unfortunately, that is not a barrel of oil and don’t ask me where it came from, but it’s 42 gallons. So if you look at the 100,000 x 42, in terms of how many gallons a modern refinery will handle.

Introduction to Chemical Engineering Lecture Pt. 5
chemical engineering expert witness

Chemical Engineers As Expert Witness Consultants

Chemical engineering expert post by Sam C.

Chemical engineers play a major role in the design and management of chemical plants, and should therefore be aware of all the dangers of the job. All places of work have their dangers, but when you are working in a place that contains high quantities of potentially deathly chemicals, certain measures should be taken to minimise the risk of any injury or damage being caused.

Everyone knows how dangerous some chemicals can be, and in the chemical plants where chemical engineers are involved, there will be lots of hazardous materials to be wary of.

A situation could arise where somebody is required to transport a barrel full of a strong acid through the plant. The barrel used in the wrong type for the strength of the acid; maybe it isn’t as strong a metal as it should be, and therefore the acid burns through the barrel and burns the feet and legs of the carrier. This puts the person out of work for several weeks to recover from his injuries. They would feel that they deserve some form of compensation for the damage caused.

However, they would be wrong to assume that they are automatically entitled to compensation purely because they have obtained an injury at work. An important factor to take into account would be whether they did everything that they should have done in order to minimise the possibility that any danger would occur. There are certain procedures that should have taken place before the accident happened; if they wearing the correct safety equipment, if it was part of their job to check whether everything was used appropriately.

This is where a chemical engineering expert witness would be required. It is vital to make a referral with a consultant before trying to launch a claim, as they have the expertise needed to be able to provide sufficient advice to help you with you case. They have the qualifications needed to make them a suitable authority for a jury to hear the situation from a leading expert in the field, and this means that they will prove an important figure in the courtroom. They will provide litigation support as well as testimony, which may prove to be the decisive factor for the jury to defend your case or not. Chemical engineering expert witnesses are certified people to make the right decision to help you make the strongest possible case if it were to go to court.

Chemical Engineers As Expert Witness Consultants