No limit on innovation here

Rahat Bano interviews VG Gaikar, head, department of chemical engineering, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai.

What skill sets are required to be a good chemical engineer?

You need to have proficiency in basic sciences such as chemistry, physics, mathematics and even biology.

One needs to have a flair for applying mathematics to the behaviour of reactors in the physical sense to predict the operating parameters. Each combination of reaction and reactor is, therefore, a challenge to a chemical engineer to make it faster, simpler and cheaper.

The increasing competition from different players means ample opportunities for innovation. The chemical industry survives and thrives because of these innovations in processes and products. Each innovation is an intellectual property and is open for challenges. You must be ready to innovate and there is no limit on imagination in the chemical industry.

What changes have come into chemical engineering over the past 25 years?

It has evolved, developing interfaces with newer areas, including biotechnology, biochemical engineering, nanotechnology, and energy engineering, taking advantage of developments in high performance computational facilities, electronics and instrumentations and information processing. The major emphasis now is on the computation side.

Apart from chemical, paints, petroleum, pharmaceutical, polymers, glass, cement, steel and aluminium, and food processing industries, which other fields require chemical engineers?

Although the basic responsibility of a chemical engineer remains in design and operation of chemical plants, the interface helps them enter newer areas.

Large manufacturing facilities such as cement factories, petroleum refineries, oil and natural gas exploration and semiconductor industries all involve chemical engineering operations. Volumes dealt with by chemical engineers vary from a few thousand tonnes a day in the bulk commodity chemical industry to a few grams or kilograms in speciality chemicals, including pharmaceuticals, paints, dyes, vegetable oils and foods.

Other than in core chemical industries, engineers find jobs in a range of industries, including in management, IT, KPO (knowledge process outsourcing) and finance.

It is not uncommon to see chemical engineers changing their field of work because of their excellent analytical skills — from chemoinformatics (application of computer and informational techniques to solve chemistry problems) to bioinformatics to drug delivery systems to molecular modelling to handling systems from nanoscales (a nanometre is one-billionth of a metre) to global scales for environmental impact and climate change

An upcoming area is energy engineering. The stress is on reducing energy consumption, making processes cheaper and faster. Chemical engineers work with pollution control boards. They do atmospheric modelling, too (in government agencies).

What is the average salary of your fresh graduates?

Pay is upwards of Rs 4 lakh for our graduate engineers. Last year, among firms that recruited from ICT were Godrej, Bharat Petroleum, Hindustan Petroleum, Indian Oil, Reliance Industries, Biocon, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Asian Paints and Cadbury’s.


Author: HT Horizons

Date:6th jan., 2010

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