Hello, my name is Professor Robbie Pott.
I am a lecturer at the Department of Process Engineering at Stellenbosch University.
The Department of Process Engineering at Stellenbosch University is the home
of the degrees in chemical engineering that Stellenbosch University offers.
So we offer both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in chemical engineering.
So a question we often get asked is, what is chemical engineering?
Well, chemical engineering relates to the development or the conversion of raw materials
or low-value materials into high-value products. So in this instance, at the bottom we see an
oil rig extracting either oil or natural gas from the sea floor.
Chemical engineers have then developed a process which converts that crude oil into
petrol and diesel and jet fuel and other interesting products.
Another interesting example is the conversion or the extraction and purification of
materials from ores into pure components. So you can see some gold that’s extracted
and this is obviously an important part of South Africa's economy.
But other materials that we extract from the earth's crust include those which we
build our computers with, that we build our buildings with and so forth.
And chemical engineers are the ones who design and run those processes.
So what's the difference between a chemist and a chemical engineer?
Well, a chemist is concerned primarily with the fundamentals of how reactions occur.
They perform experiments at small scale in a laboratory,
whereas a chemical engineer uses the techniques and the technologies that chemists have developed
to create large scale processes to do those conversions at large scale
to produce valuable materials that are useful for society.
So a chemical engineer's tools include both the chemistry that the chemists use, but
more primarily we use mathematics and modelling and process design and optimisation to create
economically viable and sustainable processes. So how do we train a chemical engineer?
Well, at Stellenbosch University we have a four-year degree that’s ECSA accredited,
that is the Engineering Council of South Africa. So students who graduate with a degree from us
can go and work in any Washington Accord signatory country. Those include Australia, New Zealand,
America, the UK, Europe and many other countries. So our graduates are in high demand across
the world and obviously in South Africa and across Africa as well.
Our first year is a common first year between all the engineering undergraduates,
so you will be studying with the civil engineers, the mechanical engineers
and so forth, all together in the first year. And you'll see that the four years are divided
into different types of courses. So in the first two years we focus
on mathematical sciences and natural sciences to give you a strong foundation.
In the years three and four we move more to the engineering sciences and applied sciences,
taking those understandings and skills that you learned in the first years and applying them to
real-world problems that you can design actual solutions to.
You'll also see that there are some complementary studies, things like communication and ethics,
so that you can work as an ethical, proper engineer in the world.
And combining those skills will then allow you to develop, at the bottom right-hand
corner you'll see there's an example, for instance, a wastewater treatment
facility that takes the waste and converts it to produce pure water and valuable bioenergy.
So the Department of Process Engineering at Stellenbosch
University has some excellent facilities. We have good undergraduate teaching facilities
available to accommodate large classes. We've got state of the art laboratories
where cutting-edge research happens. And unique amongst chemical engineering
departments in South Africa, we have a large pilot-scale facility.
So we have equipment that is comparable to industrial scale that you can work with and you
can look at and understand at a hands-on level. You'll be working alongside researchers who are
the top in their field in the world. And you'll be interacting with
postgraduates who are learning how to do these things at a very high level.
So where do chemical engineers go and work? Well, there are some traditional areas that
chemical engineers are often employed in, things like biotechnology where, for instance,
we can make bioethanol from waste materials. The food and beverage industry, so making beer and
wine and your favourite chocolate and so forth. Water purification, for instance,
is very important in South Africa. So when the City of Cape Town was
having a water emergency, it was chemical engineers, amongst others,
who were involved with designing and building those desalination plants that was so quickly
put up to provide potable water for everybody. The pharmaceutical industry also employs many
chemical engineers and chemical engineers will be involved very heavily with the development
of the processes that produce the vaccines, for instance for Covid.
So these are the kinds of places that chemical engineers are traditionally employed at.
However, our graduates find employment in a variety of other places as well.
The kind of skills and techniques that we learn in chemical engineering make us very
good at problem solving and analysis. And so those attributes make us sought
after in industries such as data science, which is a growing field,
financial services, management consultancy or research and development,
where you are more hands-on in the laboratory. Now a question that we should ask ourselves is,
where is chemical engineering going in the future and how can we make the world a better place?
Now, the skills and the problem solving that chemical engineering instils in a graduate
allow us to drive sustainability, industrial development and innovation and social welfare.
On the sustainability front we were very involved with the development of
the technologies that allowed us to grow the economy on the basis of fossil fuels.
But we understand that those things cannot continue into the future and
so chemical engineers are also involved with the development of new renewable energy-based fuels.
Like in the example here, we have corn that gets converted to bioethanol, which we can then use
in our normal internal combustion engines. Another example is, traditionally we extract
minerals from the earth's surface but, of course, that is also a finite resource.
Another area where we could be extracting materials is from waste.
Society produces large amounts of electronic waste which go into landfills.
Chemical engineers can design and do design the processes to extract
the valuable materials from those waste materials. And in our department we have cutting-edge
research for exactly that. For extracting gold,
platinum group metals, rare earth metals and so forth from electronic waste.
Chemical engineers could be at the cutting edge of innovation in a variety of areas.
For instance, in our department one professor has developed a process to produce protein in the form
of fly maggots which take waste materials and convert it into high-grade protein which we can
then feed to, for instance, chickens. This then reduces our reliance on
unsustainable sources and also integrates waste materials into the food cycle so that we are
a better, greener society. We develop new renewable energy
sources and energy storage materials. Green chemicals, a novel material
such as biodegradable plastics. And increasingly we're using data science,
artificial intelligence and neural networks to understand and optimise these processes.
Chemical engineers are very concerned with social welfare and how to improve society.
We use our skills and our problem-solving ability to address such critical problems as
food security, access to potable water. For instance, in our department
we have a professor who has developed a membrane vest water purification technology,
that can be used in rural areas where there's no access to electricity or any other materials,
so that we can roll out potable water to all people of South Africa.
We are also involved in energy security, renewable energy and making sure that the
environmental impacts of new and old processes are reduced, minimised and eliminated.
We have several research areas for when you complete your undergraduate
and are interested in doing a postgraduate degree in, for instance, bioresource engineering,
which is my own field, where we look at using organisms to produce, for instance, biohydrogen.
We have extractive metallurgy as a strong research thrust where we examine how to
better extract the materials that we need to produce interesting technologies.
We have a separations technology research group which uses the fundamental properties
of materials to separate and purify. We have waste valorisation,
which I've mentioned already. We have water technologies where we purify
and increase the access of potable water. And, increasingly, we have machine learning which
cuts across all of these research areas to use artificial intelligence and neural networks to
make interesting insights into how we can improve all of this.
If you are interested in learning more about chemical engineering or perhaps
applying to study chemical engineering at Stellenbosch University, please feel
free to drop us an email or give us a call. You're also welcome to stop by our website
where you will also find the application forms and all the information that you need.
There are some specific details about applications which you may
need to look at and the dean's presentation will have some information on that.
We look forward to welcoming you to the department and giving you the skills so that you can thrive
and that our society can thrive. Thank you.