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Introduction

In 1988, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine laid out an important vision for the field of chemical engineering in the report Frontiers in Chemical Engineering: Research Needs and Opportunities, also known as the “Amundson Report” (NRC, 1988). The report outlined a roadmap for making promising research opportunities a reality, and highlighted the remarkable potential of the profession to affect many aspects of American life and promote the scientific and industrial leadership of the United States. The report is widely recognized as having been a key driver for many advances in chemical engineering over the past 30 years. At the same time, tremendous changes have occurred in chemical engineering, in the scientific enterprise more generally, in technology, and in the relationship between science and the public. These changes have affected views on research priorities, education, and the practice of chemical engineering and will continue to do so.

PURPOSE OF THIS REPORT

At a 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) roundtable, leaders from the chemical engineering profession reached a major conclusion: the field of chemical engineering needs a new vision for the 21st century. Participants at that meeting, including both current and former AIChE presidents and multiple members of the National Academy of Engineering, underscored the transformative and lasting impact of the Amundson Report, unanimously supporting the need to update it. Perhaps more important than identifying this need, the community provided support for such a study: in addition to federal sponsors, more than 45 academic departments, private companies, and professional organizations offered financial contributions. This broad convergence of support culminated in the formation of the National Academies’ Committee on Chemical Engineering in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities. The committee’s primary task was to outline an ambitious vision for chemical engineering research, innovation, and education that could guide the profession for the next 30 years (Box 1-1).

STUDY SCOPE AND APPROACH

The Committee was formed in late 2019 and completed its work over the course of 18 months. The original work plan included six in-person meetings, five of which would include information gathering sessions open to the public, to be held in locations across the United States to maximize participation of the chemical engineering community. Additional information-gathering webinars were to be held as needed to fulfill the committee’s task. The committee’s participation in several professional society meetings also was planned to increase community engagement and input opportunities.

The committee met in person in Washington, DC, in late February 2020 to identify information-gathering needs and begin its work. Shortly after that meeting, the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a major adjustment to the committee’s information-gathering plans. In its early deliberative sessions, the committee identified the societal and environmental areas in which chemical engineers have, or are likely to have in the future, the largest impact. The committee members divided into subgroups based on those areas (energy; water, food, and air; health and medicine; manufacturing and the circular economy; materials research; tools development; and education) to gather information and begin drafting what would become the main chapters of this report. Because of the limitations of meeting virtually, the committee shifted to shorter but more frequent virtual meetings. Information-gathering sessions were distributed across many meetings of both the full committee and subgroups from summer 2020 through spring 2021, during which time the committee met 42 times, with 27 of those meetings including a session that was open to the public. To receive additional input from the community in lieu of regional in-person meetings, the committee broadly distributed a questionnaire to chemical engineers from all sectors at any stage in their career. The committee chair and National Academies

Chapter 2 provides a brief history of chemical engineering as both a discipline and a profession, including key advances in training. This chapter focuses on some of the most important contributions of chemical engineering, as well as changes in the field in the practice of research and development (e.g., a shift from multiple–principal investigator [MPI] projects and reduced corporate investment in research and development) and the societal factors (e.g., the internet and global climate change) that have affected the field.

Major advances and changes in chemical engineering over the past three decades in specific societal and environmental challenge areas are detailed in Chapters 3 through 7. The committee envisions a future for the field of chemical engineering that is more collaborative with other disciplines and across sectors. Specific opportunities for collaboration are described throughout these chapters.

Chapter 3 presents opportunities for chemical engineers to contribute to decarbonization of current energy systems, describing the key research needs across the energy value chain, from sources to various end uses. Energy, water, and food are highly interconnected, and solutions in this complex system need to be both environmentally sustainable and economically viable. Chemical engineers have historically played a central role in the energy sector; their contributions in the space of water and food, as well as air quality, have been important but are growing, as described in Chapter 4. The development of disease treatments is a multidisciplinary enterprise, and Chapter 5 describes how chemical engineers can contribute to many aspects of medicine by applying systems biology to physiology, the discovery and development of molecules and materials, and process development and scale-up. Chapter 6 explores opportunities for chemical engineers to improve the sustainability of manufacturing by advancing the use of flexible feedstocks, process intensification and distributed manufacturing, and the transition from a linear to a circular economy. Specific materials applications are discussed throughout the report, but Chapter 7 describes the role of chemical engineers in discovery science and the development of new materials and materials processes, from the molecular to the macroscopic scale. Chapter 8 describes tools and techniques with the potential to enable future advances across all of the previously discussed challenge areas.

Chapter 9 focuses on education and the need to maintain those aspects of the curriculum that have made chemical engineering successful while allowing for innovation to ensure that the next generation of chemical engineers is more demographically diverse and receives training that ensures its ability to address the challenges facing society. The report concludes with Chapter 10, focused on international leadership. Appendix A lists acronyms used in this report; Appendix B provides journal titles used for the discussion of international leadership in Chapter 10; Appendix C summarizes the results of a questionnaire distributed to the chemical engineering community; and acknowledgments and biographical sketches of the committee and staff can be found in Appendixes D and E, respectively.