Zack
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  • Depends; chemical engineers will never be optimizing personnel or delivery shipments, just the efficiency of the actual processes. So industrial engineers, who take a broader view of logistics, supply chain management, and human resources will have a different role to perform than a chemical engineer.

    There is some overlap with mechanical engineers, especially in fluids and thermodynamics work (although I think chemical engineering thermodynamics is far more rigorous). However, a manager is going to hire whichever specialist he needs for his process and take the overlap as a bonus. If the manager needs someone to work with his oil pipeline, he'll hire a mechanical engineer. If he needs someone to work with the cracker, he'll hire a chemical engineer.
    Project engineering is a bit of a fun field, since you work on a team designing new processes and factories from scratch. One of my buddies works for GA Power and is currently involved in a massive project to design a new, modern, IGCC coal-fired power plant (and I'm pretty damn jealous). Although some guys can get project engineering-type jobs (or consult on them) right out of undergrad, you usually need some post-grad education and/or experience as a process engineer first to be able to land this kind of job.

    There's really no typical job since chemical engineers go wherever there are processed chemicals, chemical reactions, or separations that must be achieved. And given that you can't bottle stuff up with toxic byproducts, purification and separation is a very important (and I think generally overlooked in the public) field that chemical engineers dominate--most people think of us as stodgy old petrochemical technicians.
    It's a good question, given the variety of jobs in the field. At the grad and post-grad level, chemical engineers overlap heavily with chemists and material scientists, a little less with mechanical and industrial engineers, biologists, and a dozen other fields.

    At the undergrad/entry level, many chemical engineers end up becoming process or project engineers. Process engineers are hired to manage and optimize a handful of related industrial processes, whether it's brewing beer, baking snack food, refining oil, making pharmaceuticals, processing cleaning solvents, operating steam turbines for electricity, etc. They figure out how to optimize the reaction conditions, heat flow, product purification, etc., figure out what sensors are appropriate, and oversee equipment upgrades to be in compliance with federal regulation.
    It's kind of funny, I thought I had added you already and was really surprised when I saw the invite message. Well, never too late to fix a mistake!
    Well some complexity can be fun.

    Just not if its overwhelming. Which at times it can be when people want to try out new combat systems and such.
    I think we were talking about this in the decline thread or whatever it was called.

    IOT was taken over by like, a whole new generation posters. I have no idea when this occurred, or who they even are. They kind of facilitated the transition from there being one giant IOT, to a whole bunch of weird mini-series ones.

    I'd like to play some more IOT, but the only ones that live up to my tastes tend to be ones from tailless. So I'm always just waiting for him to put up his new game.

    It'd be pretty cool if we could get a reunion game going for all the original IOTers, kind of relive old times. I'm not sure who would GM, or if anyone would be up for it, but I mean, one can dream.
    Thanks mate, I really like your "no holds barred" style myself. Wisely, you never give a sucker an even break.
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