One Hundred Years of Chemical Engineering: From Lewis M. Norton (M.I.T. 1888) to Present

410 Pages·19.021 MB·English

by  Nikolaos A. Peppas (auth.), Nikolaos A. Peppas (eds.)

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
CHEMISTS AND CHEMISTRY
A series of books devoted to the examination of the history and development
of chemistry from its early emergence as a separate discipline to the present
day. The series will describe the personalities, processes, theoretical and
technical advances which have shaped our current understanding of
chemical science.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS
OF
CHEMICAL ENG INEERING
From Lewis M. Norton (M.IT. 1888) to Present
Edited by
NIKOLAOS A. PEPPAS
School of Chemical Engineering, Purdue University;
West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S.A.
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
One hundred years of chemical englneering from Lewis M. Norton
(M.I.T. 1888) to present 1 edited by Nlkolaos A. Peppas.
p. cm. -- (Chemlsts and chemlstry)
Papers presented at the American Chemlcal Society Symposium held
1n Toronto. Canada. 6/5-10/88.
Includes blbll0graphies and lndex.
1. Chemical engineer1ng--Study and teaching--History--Congresses.
I. Peppas. Nlkolas A. • 1948- II. American ChemIcal Soclety.
Symposlum (1988 Toronto. Ont.) III. Serles.
TP165.054 1989
660.2·007·1'--dc19 89-2827
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-7536-7 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-2307-2
DOl: 10.1 007/978-94-009-2307-2
Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
Kluwer Academic Publishers incorporates
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printed all acid fi-ee parer
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~ 1989 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1989
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical
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PREFACE
One hundred years ago, in September 1888, Professor Lewis Mills Norton (1855-1893) of the
Chemistry Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology introduced to the curriculum
a course on industrial chemical practice. This was the first structured course in chemical engineer
ing taught in a University. Ten years later, Norton's successor Frank H. Thorpe published the first
textbook in chemical engineering, entitled "Outlines of Industrial Chemistry." Over the years,
chemical engineering developed from a simple industrial chemical analysis of processes into a
mature field.
The volume presented here includes most of the commissioned and contributed papers
presented at the American Chemical Society Symposium celebrating the centenary of chemical
engineering. The contributions are presented in a logical way, starting first with the history
of chemical engineering, followed by analyses of various fields of chemical engineering and
concluding with the history of various U.S. and European Departments of Chemical Engineering.
I wish to thank the authors of the contributions/chapters of this volume for their enthusiastic
response to my idea of publishing this volume and Dr. Gianni Astarita of the University of
Naples, Italy, for his encouragement during the initial stages of this project.
N. A. Peppas
Lafayette, Indiana
November 1988
y
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Origins of Academic Chemical Engineering
Nikolaos A. Peppas
The Development of Chemical Engineering as Shown by its Texts
D.C. Freshwater 15
Academic Connections of the 20th Century U.S. Chemical Engineers
N.A. Peppas 27
History of a Research Journal, Chemical Engineering Science
J. Bridgwater 39
The Development of Fluid Mechanics in Chemical Engineering
Stephen Whitaker 47
Changing View on the Classical Stefan Problem
H. Janeschitz-Kriegl III
Unit Processes Against Unit Operations: The Educational Fights of
the Thirties
N.A. Peppas and R.S. Harland 125
Chemical Engineering in the Netherlands 1935-1965
H. Kramers 143
Chemical Engineering Developments in India
R.A. Mashelkar and J.V. Rajan 153
Chemical Engineering at University College London
Peter N. Rowe and Anthony R. Burgess 223
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
From Mining to Chemical Engineering at the University of
Birmingham
A.J. Biddlestone and J. Bridgwater 237
Loughborough . The Development of a Department
D.C. Freshwater, B.W. Brooks and A. Foord 245
Chemical Engineering at Purdue University
Nikolaos A. Peppas and Ronald S. Harland 263
History of Chemical Engineering at the University of Rochester
John C. Friedly 30 I
Chemical Engineering Education at the University of Kansas
1895·1988
James O. Maloney 321
History of ChE at The University of Washington
Ralph Wells Moulton 353
The History of Chemical Engineering at Illinois Institute of
Technology (lIT)
Salish J. Parulekar and Darsh T. Wasan 363
History of Chemical Engineering at The New Jersey Institute of
Technology 1881·1988
Deran Hanesian, Angelo Perna and Joseph Joffe 379
Index 399
Nikolaos A. Pep pas
THE ORIGINS OF ACADEMIC CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
1. Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century Germany
The origins of chemical engineering can be linked to the industrial
revolution of the 18th and 19th century in Europe and the United States
(1-4) and the sociopolitical changes following the 1848 revolution in
France and Germany (5-6). No doubt one can claim that chemical
engineering was practiced even by the ancient Greeks and Romans when
they were making soap or wine, or treating ores in Lavrion or Sicily.
Astarita (7) clarified the importance of Italian scientists of the 15th
and 16th century in this development. Davies (8) has stressed previously
the influence of 18th century chemistry, physics and mathematics on the
development of chemical engineering. But, it was not until the first
quarter of the 19th century, especially in England and Germany, that
chemical processes in the form of what we now call "unit operations"
became the basis of many industries. The production of soap, and wine,
the distillation of spirits, the production of sulfuric acid, and the treatment
of coal are only a few of a range of processes practiced in those days.
In the beginning of the 19th century, the scientific conditions were
such that chemistry flourished in Germany. Prominent among all
scientists, Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) may be considered a major force
in 19th century chemistry, not only because of his own research but also
because of his great gift as an educator (2). Educated in Paris under
Joseph Gay-Lussac (1778-1850) and having received a doctorate from the
University of Erlangen in 1822, von Liebig established in 1825 a small
chemistry laboratory at the University of Giessen, a small town 50 km
north of Frankfurt. In the next thirty years, a plethora of students, later
famous scientists, would be educated there, including August von
Stradonitz Kekule (1829-1896), August W. von Hoffman (1818-1892), C.
Adolph Wurtz (1917-1884), and Charles F. Gerhardt (1816-1856).
The two major German Universities of the early 19th century for the
study of chemistry were the University of Gottingen and the University of
N. A. Peppas (ed.), One Hundred Years 01 Chemical Engineering, 1-14.
© 1989 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
2 N.A.PEPPAS
Heidelberg. At Gottingen, the chemistry laboratories were established by
Friedrich Strohmeyer (1775-1835) who was succeeded by Friedrich
Wohler (1800-1882), a student of Leopold Gmelin (1788-1853). The
latter was the originator of chemistry at Heidelberg, where he was
followed by Robert Bunsen (1811-1899), a student of Strohmeyer.
Thus, in the second quarter of the 19th century, three major
chemistry laboratories at the Universities of Giessen, Gottingen and
Heidelberg were producing a number of outstanding organic and physical
chemists, who would in turn establish laboratories (or "Chairs")
elsewhere, including the USA. Here were educated, Ira Remsen (1846-
1927, Professor and later President at Johns Hopkins, 1876-1913) and
Josiah Cooke (1827-1894, Professor at Harvard University), two of the
most prominent U.S. chemists in the third quarter of the 19th century.
What made von Liebig and his students "different" from other
chemists was their effort to apply their fundamental discoveries to the
development of specific chemical processes and products. The aniline dye
process of von Hoffman is only one of many processes developed between
1840 and 1880 in Germany. This trend, however, did not continue past
the third quarter of the 19th century. For example, von Liebig moved to a
"better Chair" at Munich in 1852, where he became involved in pure,
theoretical chemistry.
2. Industrial Changes
The political revolution of February 1848 in France swept eastward
across the Rhine, overthrew established authority in Germany, put in
power men who had been asking for change and gave central Europe a
taste of liberal reform (5,6). One of the main results of these changes was
the improvement of work conditions in the industrialized European
countries (4). Industrial workers demanded shorter work weeks, higher
pay and safe working conditions. This led to a need to revise acceptable
industrial processes with an emphasis, albeit primitive, on safer and more
efficient methods. Like a phoenix, chemical engineering would emerge
from the needs of the mid 19th century.
Despite these developments, education in these areas was not
formalized. At best, students obtained some superficial knowledge about
these processes in chemistry courses. The operation of distillation
columns, filtration units, etc. was taught in "technical" schools, not in
Universities. For example, the Technical University of Braunschweig,
THE ORIGINS OF ACADEMIC CHEMICAL ENGINEERING 3
would soon give such "industrial" courses, but in the eyes of the academic
descendents of von Liebig at Gottingen, Heidelberg and Berlin, this was
not a "University!"
3. George E. Davis
It was in 1887 that an unknown industrial inspector from
Manchester, England, George E. Davis (1850-1906) decided to transfer
his vast knowledge from his years of inspecting chemical plants in the
industrial region of England to the classroom (9). In the fall of 1887 he
gave a series of 12 lectures, later published in the Chemical Trade
Journal. The material was quite empirical, but it had a definite advantage
in that, at last, an individual had put on paper a series of articles on the
operation of some of the important chemical processes of those days.
4. The First Chemical Engineering Curriculum
At the end of the 19th century the competition of England, Germany
and the United States for industrial chemicals had become rather fierce. It
was not surprising then that only one year after Davis' lectures in
Manchester, Professor Lewis M. Norton (1855-1893) of the Chemistry
Department of M.LT. started teaching a course in chemical engineering.
As Weber (10) notes, the material was taken predominantly from his notes
on industrial chemical practice in Germany, which at that time had
probably the most advanced chemical process industry in the world.
When Norton died in 1893, Professor Frank H. Thorpe (1864-1932),
who had received a B.S. degree from M.LT. only four years earlier and a
doctorate from the University of Heidelberg in 1893, took responsibility
for Norton's course and published in 1898 what may be considered to be
the first textbook in chemical engineering (11), entitled Outlines of
Industrial Chemistry. The term "Industrial Chemistry" first appearing in
Norton's book to broadly describe industrial processes applied in the
production of chemicals would become strongly associated with chemical
engineering in the next fifty years. Not until the radical approach to
analysis of chemical engineering problems introduced by, among others,
R. Neal Amundson and Rutherford Aris in the mid 1950's at the
University of Minnesota, and by B. Robert Bird, Warren E. Stewart and
Edwin N. Lightfoot at the University of Wisconsin would "industrial