3 replies to this topic

[kitonas]

Hello,
I'm Saleh from Yemen
I'm planning to go Malaysia in UCSI to study chemical engineering
But I have breathing allergies  caused by strong smells like smoke,strong perfumes ...etc

would pursuing career in chemical engineering be unsuitable for me and could do me harm and trigger my allergies ? or do careers in chemical engineering  not involve these kinds of smells ? thank you very much

[samayaraj]

Hi,

 

It depends which path you are choosing. There are many faces for chemical engineering. Process design, proposal, production, project execution (erection and commissioning, ) etc. I have worked initially in effluent treatment plant where lots of solvents vapor I inhaled. It affected me much and this made me to switch to projects and so on. If you are in production, most of the times you have to face the chemicals directly/ indirectly. If you are in erection/ commissioning, lots of dusts, welding fumes etc may affect. If you choose process design, you can get rid of these things comparatively.

[chocobang]

It depends. The majority of chemical engineering graduates either goes to (1) operations, operation support, i.e. process technologists, (2) engineering design, or the (3) academe. There are still other careers available but as far as I know, majority goes to these three.

 

Choosing (2) or (3) is best for you. Most work is done in office setting for engineering design but one may need to go to site during commissioning as samayaraj pointed out.

[Dipankarc84]

Saleh,

 

Thank you very much and I am very glad that you asked this question. As Chemical Engineers, it is our duty to eliminate such outrageous myths from the society. I still feel really sick when the so-called Hollywood "pundits" carelessly label the "Oil industry" for all kinds of cancers and diseases and what not! 

First of all "Chemical Engineering" is an extremely broad area of study. It deals with everything starting from nano-technology, fluid mechanics, pharmaceutical processes, chemicals manufacturing, thermodynamics and last but not the least (or only) hydrocarbon processing and petrochemicals manufacturing

 

The biggest tragedy is that we decided to name ourselves "Chemical" engineers. Please note that most industries rightfully recognize us as "Process Engineers" because we engineer a process and "Chemistry" is just a small part of it. So, at least in college, you will not spend all your years in a Dexter's laboratory mixing chemicals in test tubes. On the contrary, you will be working on instruments, pumps and many more of these systems that you will start to learn once you begin your course. In college you would mostly be in front of a desk or a computer working on Physics and Thermodynamics problems and very little Chemistry. After your graduation, you do not need to necessarily only work in a Chemical factory. You may very well want to work on fluid properties and things like Computational Fluid Dynamics (the cool simulations that also help the Formula One cars get faster!) or Nano-technology or Enhanced Heat Transfer (Chemical engineers are working on solving the overheating problem of processors!). 

 

You have done the right thing in asking this question upfront in the right forum. I would suggest that you join the course with a broad outlook and you never know where you might end up (in a good way!)!! All the best!!!

 

Regards

Dipankar