[wenhao89]

I would also like to know the demand for chemical engineers in different countries.

[eugenedakin]

Hello wenhao89,

In Alberta, Canada, the greatest demand for Chemists and engineers is in the oilfield.

I hope this helps,

Eugene

[wenhao89]

yes of coz^^

[eric tan]

the greatest demand of chemical engineers are in oil fields, and they handle things like petrolchemical and so on

[Donaldson Tan]

Work in the oil and gas sector is divided into 2 categories - upstream and downstream. Upstream work involves extracting oil/gas from under the ground and sea, whereas downstream work refers to the refinery and petrochemical processing.

Nowadays, the money is in the upstream work, where chemical engineers are involved in extracting oil. It is not simply just mechanical piping to extract the oil. Specialised chemical engineering know-how is required, such as identifying suitable additives to add to the oil to decrease its viscosity or change its freezing point. This area of work has become more and more challenging due to fact the decreasing quality of oil and decreasing ease of extracting oil in many major oil/gas fields worldwide. Countries that demand upstream chemical engineers are Qatar, Canada, Mexico, Kazakstan, etc. Upstream work is also available at many offshore platforms. Companies like Schlumberger pay US$4-5K/mth to a fresh chemical engineering graduate to work on a offshore platform or in an exotic country (eg. Angola).

Downstream work still pays well, compared to the other sectors in the energy and chemical industries. The traditional image of downstream work is the refinery. Chemical engineers are involved in distilling the various petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel. Petroleum is still the source of many principal organic building blocks used by the chemical industry to make the various product molecules such acrylic acid, which is then in turn used by other sectors in the chemical industry to make the final product (eg. paracetamol). Due to the recent "worldwide dash for natural gas", Gas-To-Liquid (GTL) technology is increasingly important in downstream work. Chemical engineers are involved in designing and operating the chemical process for liquefying natural gas (by combining polymerisation with cooling).

[hamnoj]

My point in asking this is that I, as a student in college would like to know my options and what exactly chemical engineering is all about.
For one, I really do enjoy chemistry and it's by far my favorite subject. However,I keep having this notion that all chemical engineers will eventually end up working in either a paint factory, or a margarine producing plant. Random, yes I know. So I would greatly appreciate any feedback or advice from you guys (the pros) who are already out there in the big white world. Some general knowledge of what basically makes a chemical engineer's job would also help tremendously. 

Thanks in advance,
Jon

[Ely]

Generally, Chemical Engineers are the ones involve in converting raw materials into product applying the different unit operations.
I hope it helps.

[tripton]

The chemical engineers works in very different kind of industries. Of course Gas&Oil sector has a great demand but is not the only one.
In South America, lot of Chemical Engineers works in food industries. Some of them in minning or plastics, or rubber or any of those industries. Environmental engineering is also an important field. There we can design and operate wastewater and exhaust gases treatment plants, and also work in the industrial process to improve the environmental performance.
In academic field, and R&D the chemical engineer may develop new idnustrial processes and scale up new technologies developed at laboratory scale by the chemists (and sometimes also by us). We have a key participation in the development of new alternative technologies (hidrogen, solar pannels, chemical batteries and cells, biogas, biodiesel, and so on)
I know collegues working in very several fields. For instance, piping design, plants design, quality management, plant management, plant operations, instrumentation and control systems, wastes treatment plants, governmental sector (in discharging permissions), mathematical modeling, and lot of different things. Even in some cases they overlap other disciplines (chemist, industrial eng., electronic eng., physics).
In my university a teacher says that we must be called "process engineers" because we can be usefull in any process.

[fuwei]

Hello guys....
I would like to know besides oilfield, which field is in great demand(in Malaysia and other country) ?
How is consumer chemical field ? Is it in great demand too ? Coz i'm in interest with that field

(i mean consumer chemical is field that improve product which comsumed or used by people. Is that called consumer chemical field ?  )

Thanks.
Fuwei

[Donaldson Tan]

Fuwei, you are probably thinking of companies such as P&G where chemical engineers are employed in manufacturing detergents, perfume, food preservatives, food additives and packaging materials.