Introduction to Chemical Engineering

This book is an outgrowth of the authors teaching experience of a course on Introduction to Chemical Engineering to the firstyear chemical engineering students of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. The book serves to introduce the students to the role of a chemical engineer in society. In addition to the classical industries, the role of chemical engineers in several esoteric areas such as semiconductor processing and biomedical engineering is discussed. Besides highlighting the principles and processes of chemical engineering, the book shows how chemical engineering concepts from the basic sciences and economics are used to seek solutions to engineering problems. The book is rich in examples of innovative solutions found to problems faced in chemical industry. It includes a wide spectrum of topics, selected from the industrial interactions of the author. It encourages the student to see the similarities in the concepts which govern apparently dissimilar examples. It introduces various concepts, using both physical and mathematical bases, to facilitate the understanding of difficult processes such as the scaleup process. The book contains several case studies on safety, ethics and environmental issues in chemical process industries.

S. Pushpavanam, PhD, University of Florida, is the Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He has been actively involved in teaching and research for the past 22 years. He was a faculty in IIT Kanpur from 1989 to 1997. His research interests include mathematical modeling and simulation, nonlinear dynamics and bifurcation theory, clean energy (with emphasis on coal gasification), microfluidics and process intensification. In addition to working with the government agencies on sponsored-research projects, he has collaborated extensively with numerous industries such as Tata Beverages, Bharat Petroleum, Indian Oil, General Motors, and so forth. He is the recipient of the Fulbright Fellowship (1995) and the Rajarambapu National Award for the best engineering college teacher given by the Indian Society of Technical Education (ISTE).