Although the chemical engineering field owes its existence to Democritus, a Greek philosopher who proposed the concept of the atom around 440 BC, this event technically relates to chemistry. The proposal of an atom led to further developments in chemistry throughout the ages, eventually culminating in the advent of industrial chemistry. Industrial chemistry is where the story of chemical engineering truly begins.
Before the Industrial Revolution, industrial chemicals were produced via batch production, limited by the amount of reagents used to produce them. The Industrial Revolution created a serious demand for industrial chemicals and strained the limited resources produced by batch production. Something needed to be done so that resource production could keep up with the newly inflated demand.
The solution soon came, as society shifted away from batch towards continuous production, such as can be done with an assembly line. This allowed for the production of more goods at a much lower cost. Enough industrial chemicals could thus be produced to meet the needs of a newly industrialized world. Large-scale manufacture was born.
Industrial chemistry was recognized as the production of valuable products from raw materials via chemical and physical processes. Developing and controlling these processes, however, was viewed as separate. This separate discipline eventually became known as “chemical engineering”.
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