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

410 Pages·1989·19.02 MB·English
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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 the publishing programmes of D. Reidel, Martinus Nijhoff. Dr W. Junk and MTP Press. Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Academic Publishers. 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwcr Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. printed all acid fi-ee parer All Rights Reserved ~ 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 including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. 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

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