Chemical Product Design

3 units

In addition to addressing the question "How should we make it?" (process engineering), chemical engineers nowadays are often concerned with the question "What should we make?" (product engineering). The prosperity of the chemical industry increasingly depends on innovative new products (often incorporating advanced or "green" materials) that advance the quality of our life and achieve energy and environmental sustainability. Product design and engineering synthesizes (i) the market pull for innovations in the development of improved or new products, together with (ii) the technology push from advances in our fundamental understanding of structure-property relations at the atomic, molecular, nano-scale, and continuum levels. The ChemE Product Design course encompasses the (1) general framework for product design and development (identify customer needs, convert needs to specifications, create ideas/concepts, select concepts, formulate/test/manufacture product; also the intellectual property, safety, environmental, marketing, and financial considerations), and (2) structure-property relations that guide the search for materials with particular properties, as well as modifications of existing materials that would improve properties. These two main themes are reinforced by (3) case studies of products with a well-documented history of invention, development, and marketing.