Chemical Engineering

Chemical engineering is the study and practice of transforming substances at large scales for the tangible improvement of the human condition. Such transformations are executed to produce other useful substances or energy, and lie at the heart of vast segments of the chemical, petroleum, pharmaceutical and electronic industries.

Chemical engineering differs from chemistry mainly in the focus on large scales. The definition of "large" is a bit arbitrary, of course, but is set mainly by the scale of useful commercial production. Typically, this scale ranges from barrels to tank cars, whereas the chemist tends to be concerned about sizes ranging from vials to beakers.