(91a) Designing Chemical Products

Many questions must be answered when designing a chemical product: What kind of performance properties must the product possess? Should it have a high enthalpy of vaporization, low flammability, shear thinning viscosity or undergo an exothermic reaction when contacted with air? Does the product need to contain multiple phases or be formulated to have a specific azeotropic or eutectic composition? What is the life of the product and how will it be disposed of? Must it be biodegradable or can it be burned for fuel? Can the product be profitably produced?

Chemical engineers are well suited to answer these questions and the many others that arise when designing a chemical product. Our knowledge of physical chemistry, heat transfer, separations, kinetics and economics used to design reactors, distillation columns and heat exchangers is just as applicable for the design of lubricants, deicing fluids, blood substitutes and rocket fuels.

I will present several examples to show how basic chemical engineering knowledge can be used to design a broad range of chemical products.