Journal of King Saud University – Engineering Sciences (2014) 26, 1–2
King Saud University
Journal of King Saud University – Engineering Sciences
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EDITORIAL
Chemical engineering: Past; present and future
Chemical Engineering is a relatively new engineering discipline
that came through a tortuous route of: Chemistry (by all its
branches); applied chemistry and chemical technology. It
quickly emerged with mathematics, physics and material sci-
ence and started to be classified according to System Theory
(ST). The earliest classification was into the two main catego-
ries: Unit Operations (not involving chemical reactions) and
Unit Processes (involving chemical reactions therefore not
only addressing physical transformations and separations but
also transforming raw materials to products with different
molecular structures). This simple structure branched quickly
on the 1960’s into the well-known structure formed mainly
of: material and energy balances (principles of chemical engi-
neering), fluid mechanics, transport phenomena, mechanical
unit operations, mass transfer unit operations, mathematical
modelling, chemical reaction engineering (reactor design),
plant design and economics, process dynamics and control,
biochemical engineering, etc.
This structure of chemical engineering became the back-
bone of the curriculum in many universities around the world.
In some universities it branched by the 1980’s adding more
emphasis to biological engineering (biochemical and biomedi-
cal), in other universities they gave more emphasis to environ-
mental engineering and in others to materials engineering, etc.
The most successful were the departments that changed from
chemical to chemical and biological engineering. The depart-
ments that changed to chemical and environmental started to
face the challenge that environmental engineering is moving
towards becoming a sub-system of Sustainable Development
(SD) engineering (Elnashaie et al., 2008). The departments
which moved to chemical and materials started to face the
challenge of nano-materials.
The start of big challenges accompanied the Amundson re-
port: Frontiers in Chemical Engineering, Research Needs and
Opportunities (Committee on Chemical Engineering Frontiers,
1988) which predicted and explained many of the forthcoming
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directions of chemical engineering. The brilliance of the report
is that most of its predictions proved to be right and it is advis-
able for all chemical engineers in academia and industry to
read it.
It is very important nowadays for chemical engineers to
realize the main characteristics that chemical engineering is
going through:
(1) Extensive use of mathematical modelling, numerical
techniques and fast digital computers.
(2) The extensive use of software without necessarily know-
ing the internals of the software while other chemical
engineers will collaborate with programmers to build
and develop such software (e.g., COMSOL Multi-
Physics).
(3) The fact that analogue control is industrially obsolete
and is entirely replaced by digital control (e.g., PROV-
OX System of Fisher Control).
(4) The multidisciplinary nature of all branches of chemical/
biological engineering.
(5) The extreme importance of nano-technology and devel-
oping it into nano-engineering as an integral part of
chemical engineering.
(6) The introduction of SD to all aspects of chemical/bio-
logical engineering.
This is a very brief description of the past present and fu-
ture of chemical/biochemical engineering and the present and
future should witness extensive collaboration between experi-
mental and mathematical modelling; between laboratory re-
search and industrial applications as well the use of
Renewable Raw Materials (RRMs) in Integrated Bio Refiner-
ies (IBRs) to achieve SD using novel technologies. Chemical
engineers should be also strongly aware of the strong relation
between their rich profession and complexity, both natural and
manmade (Elnashaie and Grace, 2007).
References
Committee on Chemical Engineering Frontiers, 1988. Frontiers in
Chemical Engineering, Research Needs and Opportunities.
National Academy Press, Washington, D.C..
2 Editorial

Elnashaie, Said S.E.H., Grace, John, 2007. Complexity, bifurcation

and chaos in natural and man-made lumped and distributed
systems. Chem. Eng. Sci. 62, 3295–3325.
Elnashaie, Said S.E.H., Fateen, Seif-Edeen, El-Ahwany, Ahmed,
Mostafa, Tarek M., 2008. Integrated system approach to sustain-
ability. Bio-fuels and bio-refineries. Bull. Sci. Technol. Soc. 28,
510–520.
Said Salah Eldin Elnashaie
Chemical and Environmental Engineering Department, Univer-
sity Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang, Malaysia
Chemical and Biological Engineering Department, University of
British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada
E-mail address: selnashaie@gmail.com