Chemical Engineers
Chemical engineers work with businesses in the health care, biotechnology or business industry and plan how to use chemicals to produce things we can't live without like food and energy.
If you are a science buff and good at thinking through problems and solving them, math, listening, writing and thinking outside the box, then you are probably a chemical engineer in the making.
As a chemical engineer you will make decisions about chemicals, their production and they way they are used. These people are the brain behind the equipment and processes at big manufacturing plants. Things people use every day like electronics, food, paper, energy and even paper are produced, in part, thanks to chemical engineers.
This field is very diverse and you can chose if you want to join the health care, biotechnology or business industry. Chemical engineers work in all these fields and are responsible for different things, depending on the industry they work in.
As a chemical engineer, your day will be spent working with chemical reactions, operating equipment, solving manufacturing problems, doing research, performing tests, designing equipment, preparing cost estimates and much more.
You will also work with tools like heat exchangers, lyophilizers, mixing tanks, programmable logic controllers PLC, vacuum pumps, engineering software, computer aided design CAD software and spreadsheets.
To break into the chemical engineering industry, you will need a bachelor’s degree and some work experience can help you land your first job.
While the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts an overall slight decrease in job availability in this field, there will be a growth in the number of chemical engineering jobs in service-providing industries.