In engineering, chemical engineering applies scientific principles, generally in industry, to the practical conversion of basic raw materials into a variety of products, and dealing with the design and operation of plants and equipment to perform such work; all products are formed in chemical processes involving chemical reactions carried out under a wide range of conditions and frequently accompanied by changes in physical state or form. [1]
History
In 1847, the Sheffield Scientific School was founded as a school of Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut for instruction in science and engineering.
In 1863, Willard Gibbs completed the first PhD in engineering in America and in 1871, two years after returning from a study abroad at various universities in Europe, Gibbs became Yale's first professor of mathematical physics, following which, in beginning in 1873, with the publication of his "Graphical Methods in the Thermodynamics of Fluids", and his two papers to follow, focused on the equilibrium of heterogeneous substances, he began to found chemical thermodynamics, the backbone of the chemical engineering.
In 1888, at MIT, first chemical engineering degree program was founded. [4]
In 1971, Hungarian chemical engineer turned theoretical biologist Tibor Ganti introduced his "chemoton" or chemical automaton theory.
In circa 2014, American electrochemical engineer Libb Thims was beginning to attempt to probe (see: two cultures inquiries) the establishment a humanities course explicitly designed for chemical engineers, and or physical science minded humanities students, stylized as physicochemical humanities and or physicochemical sociology, based on the drafting textbook Chemical Thermodynamics: with Applications in the Humanities, a seeming enactment of the long-sought so-called Nightingale Chair of Sociophysics.
Hmolscience
The following are noted chemical engineers to have produced, commented on, and or interjected into hmolscience theory:
Chemical engineer | Date | Significance | |
1. | (1876-1947) English-born American naval architect, marine engineer, chemical engineer, and industrial executive | 1914 | |
2. | (1867-1917) German-born American electrochemcial engineer | 1914 | His “The European War” stated that WWI (28 Jul 1914 – 11 Nov 1918) was a gigantic chemical reaction governed by the second law, wherein people’s free will becomes like that of the will of “free” ions of dissociation theory; that entropy will increase as the war goes; that the end result will be a new Europe closer to absolute zero of temperature. |
3. | (1903-1957) Hungarian-born American mathematician and chemical engineer | 1932 | |
4. | (1926-1995) American chemical engineer turned sociologist | 1964 | His Introduction to Mathematical Sociology, uses concepts such as: chemical reaction, temperature, entropy, molecular interactions, etc., as launching points for discussions in developing sociology theory. |
5. | (1899-1990) American chemical engineer, physical chemist, and chemical thermodynamicist | 1971 | |
6. | (1934-c.2005) American chemical engineer | c.1972 | Interjected into extensive dialogue with Brazilian chemical engineering graduate student Edison Bittencourt on the subject of the implications of thermodynamics to humanities, i.e. economics and sociology, and seeming purpose behavior in biology (powered-chnopsology). |
7. | (1943-) American chemical engineer and theoretical ecologist | 1979 | |
8. | (c.1931-) American chemical engineer (stimulated by Prigogine) | 1980 | Starting with his 1980 The New Age-Scale for Humans, followed by about a dozen various publications, he builds significantly on the work of Ilya Prigogine to outline a thermodynamic theory of aging; in his 2009 Entropy Theory of Aging Systems: Humans, Corporations, and the Universe, in summarizing the free energy ideas of Prigogine, he states: “Thermodynamic equilibrium may be characterized by the minimum of the Helmholtz free energy, F = E – TS, where E is the internal energy, T is the absolute temperature, and S is entropy. Positive time, the direction of time’s arrow, is associated with increase in entropy. Isolated or closed systems evolve to an equilibrium state characterized by the existence of a thermodynamic potential such as the Helmholtz or Gibbs free energy. These thermodynamic potentials and also entropy are, according to Prigogine, Lyapounov functions, which means they drive the system toward equilibrium in the face of small disturbances.” Likewise, he in regards to free energy and aging he argues that: “Old age or senescence may be the decline in our ability to produce free energy. Less free energy means diminished cell function. Vitality might be defined as our biological and thermodynamic strength, the ability to expend energy to restore ourselves to near original conditions.” He goes on to apply this basis to what he calls the "entropic analysis of a human living system", wherein he argues that “the living system is essentially and open system because it maintains itself by the exchange of matter and energy with the environment and by the continuous building up and breaking down of its internal components” and on this logic goes on to argue that Prigogine entropy (equation shown) applies to these so-called living systems, to corporations, etc. |
9. | (1927-) American chemical engineer and thermodynamicist | 1988 | in which, given the knowledge of universal entropy increase, provides a saving grace by showing us the ‘way’, which he seems to equate with paths of negligible entropy change (equation shown). |
10. | (1901-1994) American chemical engineering | 1989 | In his memorial chapter “Schrodinger’s Contribution to Chemistry and Biology”, he rips apart Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger's 1943 life is something that feeds on negative entropy theory (see: Note to Chapter 6). |
11. | (c.1941-) Croatian chemical engineer and thermodynamicist | 1991 | |
12. | (1948-) Mexican-born American chemical engineer and physical chemist | 1993 | His 1993 unpublished manuscript "negentropic thermodynamics", which tries to "debunk" Clausius so to explain life and evolution, resulted in his 2007 booklet Negative Entropy: a Brief Incursion into the Uncharted Universe of Decreasing Entropy, which amounts to a less-coherent version of a Pierre Teilhard like attempt to reformulate thermodynamics in the name of anthropomorphic conceptual ideals. |
13. | (c.1975-) American chemical engineer, electrical engineer, and thermodynamicist | 1995 | mate selection, with enthalpy change ΔH and entropy change ΔS specifically quantified in terms of standard evolutionary psychology variables, mapped to second-by-second changing measures of individual differential human molecular Gibbs free energy variations dG, as shown below (see: HMO theory): such as if one was to predict which of two mates would be more favored to bind "stably" into a standard 18-year human chemical reaction; a number of precipitates have followed from this endeavor: one of the first calculations of the human molecular formula (2002); first formulations of the physics model of the human chemical bond A≡B (2005); launched Journal of Human Thermodynamics (2005); authored first human chemistry textbook (2007); published The Human Molecule (2008); launched Hmolpedia (EoHT.info) (2008), and as of 2013 has authored over 2,800 online articles related to the hmolscience subjects: human physics, human chemistry, human thermodynamics. |
14. | (1963-) Venezuelan-born English chemical engineer and thermodynamicist | 1998 | |
15. | (1956-) American chemical engineer and physician | 1998 | |
16. | (c.1948-) American-born Brazilian chemical engineer | 1999 | |
17. | (c.1960-) Peruvian chemical engineer | 2001 | |
18. | (1948-) Russian-born Israeli chemical engineer | 2004 | His article “Aesthetic, Philosophical and Historical aspects in the Physical Chemistry education”, speculated on how Gibbs energy is similar to Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be?’ of William Shakespeare; his 2011 conference presentation “Use of Art Media in Engineering and Scientific Education”, Groysman cites the human chemistry work of Johann Goethe and Libb Thims, among others; and discusses how not only is their "two cultures" (as professed by Charles Snow) but more likely "three cultures"; and advocates the teaching of human chemistry in engineering. |
19. | (1920-2009) Japanese chemical engineer and chemical thermodynamicist | 2004 | |
20. | (1938-) Czech chemical engineer, solid state physicists, and materials scientist | 2005 | |
21. | (1973-) English chemical engineering student turned biotechnologist | 2006 | an example being his “soulatrophic” model of morality, in which state of humanity is positied to be evolving to a future iron-like orbital structure of stability (similar to Pierre Teilhard’s omega point theory). |
22. | (1961-) American chemical engineer | 2006 | |
23. | (1952-) Indian chemical engineer and mineral engineer | 2006 | |
24. | (c.1987-) American chemical engineer | 2009 | |
25. | (1958-) Iranian-born American chemical engineer | 2011 | |
26. | (c.1960-) American chemical engineer | 2011 | |
27. | (c.1971-) American chemical engineer | 2011 | Her course supplement booklet Engineering Thermodynamics and 21st Century Energy Problems, contains twenty modules targeted toward meeting five often-neglected ABET outcomes: ethics, communication, existence-long learning, social context, and contemporary issues, with human thermodynamics education chapter sections such as “entropy as a social construct” (e.g. social thermodynamics), “entropy’s philosophical implications” (e.g. philosophical thermodynamics), “thermo to life” (e.g. defunct theory of life), among others, each with a four-part engage/analyze/reflect/change reading program with what seem to be classic human thermodynamic stylized “homework problem” assignments. |
28. | (c.1985-) Indian chemical engineer | 2012 | |
29. | (1947-) Chilean chemical engineer | 2012 | |
30. | (c.1950-) Turkish chemical engineer, | 2012 | Published articles on sociophysics, econophysics, and one in particular on thermodynamics applied to (i) the behavior of the NASDAQ-100 index, (ii) a social revolt, and (iii) the structure of a melody were analyzed for their ‘work-like’, ‘heat-like’, and ‘torque-like’ energies in the course of their evolution. |
31. | (1928-) American chemical engineer and molecular thermodynamicist | 2013 | Gave the following opinion to American electrochemical engineer Libb Thims about the prospect of founding a two cultures department at the University of California, Berkeley, centered at the chemical and biomolecular engineering department: “I don't know what the Rossini debate is but I hope to find out. No, your idea for a department for teaching two cultures would not be appreciated at Berkeley. In the social sciences and in some humanities, thermodynamics may be useful as an analogy, as a suggestion for looking at a problem (e.g., information theory) but beyond that, I see little use of thermodynamics outside science.” |
32. | (1951-) American chemical engineer and thermodynamicist | 2014 | Co-authored, with American leadership psychologist Richard Kilburg, the 2014 “Leadership and Organization Behavior: a Thermodynamic Inquiry”, wherein (see: ChE + H coupling) they outline a molecular thermodynamics based model of leadership and organizational behavior. |
33. | (c.1972-) Colombian chemical engineer | 2014 | His 2014 conference presentation “Chemical Engineering and Complexity, an Undissipated Structure … Yet”, similar to what Alec Groysman suggested at the 2011 Generative Art Conference, Rome, suggested that chemical engineering students be introduced to applications beyond traditional “classical chemical engineering” applications, namely in the humanities-applied area of investigation, that of the: Erich Muller, Paul Samuelson, Mohsen Mohsen-Nia, John Bryant, Journal of Human Thermodynamics, Santa Fe Institute, etc., type of chemical thermodynamics based complexity approach applied to sociology and economics. |
“The matter of multiplicity of contributors needs no great explanation, for we are all used to this in the modern handbooks. I believe it is a common saying that Helmholtz was the last universal genius, and we are fast arriving at the point where even a single subject becomes too vast for one man. At any rate, whether or not any of my learned colleagues could write an entire chemical engineering handbook, I could not—hence the present form.”— Donald Liddell (1922) Handbook of Chemical Engineering, McGraw-Hill [2]
“It is interesting to note that socio-thermodynamics is only accessible to chemical engineers and metallurgists. These are the only people who know phase diagrams and their usefulness. It cannot be expected, in our society, that sociologists will appreciate the potential of these ideas.”— Ingo Muller (2007), A History of Thermodynamics [3]