Marc Luber: Hey everyone – Marc Luber here from Careers Out There – you can find me
at Careers Out There dot com.
I recently interviewed Joe Sullivan, a chemical engineer in the pharmaceutical industry with
over 10 years of experience.
I asked Joe to help me understand engineering and what chemical engineers do.
Here’s a look at how it went: For some reason engineering is not sexy and people don’t
care.
So it’s YOUR job today for our audience – you’ve gotta make it sexy!
So we’ll put that pressure on you so that we could turn on a whole future batch of chemical
engineers watching today.
You told me a REALLY, REALLY eye-opening story the other day that helped me understand engineering
a LOT.
How you helped the paint company that you worked at by applying these basic foundations
of chemical engineering.
Joe Sullivan: Yeah.
So the big story I shared with you the other day is I worked in the paint industry for
about 1 year.
They, until I was hired, they had basically for I think about 100 years they’d been
there, so they’d never really had a process engineer.
They’d never had like a real chemical engineer who understood the nature of fluids, which
is all what paint is.
So when I first got there, and I got to work out in the factory, they had a particular
process where they were making white paint.
And in the process of making paint you grind pigment up and as you grind it more and more
you get stronger and stronger paint, essentially.
And they had had this tank and it would take them up to a week of adding the pigment in
the tank and mixing it, agitating it with what you can almost imagine like a blender-like
blade in there, like mixing it up, this blade that could be lowered or raised.
They would turn it on high speed and it would get mixed up and then they would run it through
a mill, which is a bunch of balls that crunch the pigment up more and they’d bring it
back into the tank and they’d do it again and again.
They had found that this process took several iterations of going around that loop until
they got the product out that they needed for the customer in the end.
So I said “oh, let me look at this”.
I took a sample of paint, I took measurements of the tank, I went back to my desk, I did
some calculations – well first I measured the paint and its properties, how thick it
is, just some general properties, how heavy it is.
Then I went back to my desk and kind of calculated out that they weren’t running it correctly
at all!
So I went back out, I told them to turn down the motor on the tank and they kind of looked
at me like in disbelief and they said “that’s never gonna work, never in a million years.”
So what I had established was that they were running the blade so fast that they had put
the fluid into what’s called “turbulent flow” and when fluid is in turbulent flow,
all the molecules in the fluid, and in this particular instance the paint particles we
wanted to get torn apart, are ultimately just dancing around each other because you can
imagine like turbulence – when you think of things being turbulent they’re plopping
all over each other- but they weren’t really breaking apart.
So what I did instead is put the fluid in the tank in what’s called “laminar flow”
where the fluid is moving against itself like this in sheets.
And in between those sheets, if you can imagine, there’s something stuck between the sheets
it gets torn apart, it gets pulled in 2 different directions at once, and that would really
break it up very efficiently.
So I had them lower the speed so the fluid would settle out into this beautiful laminar
flow and sure enough – I was able to grind all the pigment in the tank in like 28 hours!
And we just had to do one pass through the mill and we were done!
So they went from several days down to 28 hours - and the look on their faces was like
disbelief!
Luber: You maximized their output by 7 times!
Joe: Yes!
Something close to that, yes!
And again, that’s what engineers do.
Is you take some time to think out “what are the things affecting what I’m trying
to make” and then you optimize those things and you figure them out so as to make the
thing better, cheaper, faster, stronger, whatever you’re looking for.
Luber: And then they saw the value of engineering!
And that whole story helped ME see the value so I’ve gotta figure it helps the audience
see the value too.
So you’re making it sexy!
Joe: I guess as sexy as paint can be, you know?!
Luber: Exactly!
I hope this video was helpful for you guys.
If you liked it please click the thumbs up!
If you want to learn more about this career you can watch the full interview at Careers
Out There dot com.
You can also find us at Facebook, Twitter, and we’ve got lots more videos here on YouTube.
On Careers Out There we interview all kinds of professionals to help you find a career
that fits you so you can love what you do.
Thanks again for watching everybody.
I’m Marc Luber.
Look forward to seeing you again soon.
Take care.
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