r/ChemicalEngineering

I am a 3rd year ChemE who wants to go into oil and gas. I recently was offered a proccess enginering internship at a PBF refinery. I also interviewed for similar positions with Exxon and Valero.

Each interview was good and I liked all the people I spoke to and all of positions sound similar. They all will probably pay in the $40-50 per hour range and will all be on the gulf. I like each company but the only hang up I have is the "prestige" of Exxon and Valero.

PBF says they need to know soon as they are trying to quickly fill their intern pool this summer and I am wondering if there is anything to working at a bigger company like Exxon. I have heard the whole deal with how Exxon is a huge corporation and you get lost in the crowd there but for an internship is there value in having a name like Exxon vs PBF to show to future employers?

Hello, I am a student from STEM and I am currently in the final grade of High School in the Philippines. I am taking up a class in research, in which we are also required to have a content expert in our study.

Me and my research groupmates have been struggling with our current study because of the unavailability of a content expert, a specific situation that we are currently facing is the need of a content expert to validate our research instrument. For those who are willing to help, please contact me immediately. Thank you!

Hi everyone!
I’m having a hard time deciding between Chemical Engineering (with a Biochemical Engineering concentration) and Biomedical Engineering with a concentration in cell and tissue engineering .
I’m particularly interested in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, drug delivery, tissue engineering, and cellular/molecular biology.
I’m not particularly interested in medical devices, prosthetics, petroleum, or traditional heavy industrial engineering.
My main priorities are:
Job opportunities and stability: I want a degree that offers strong employment prospects, preferably in biotech or pharma.
Salary and career growth: I’d like to have good earning potential without needing a PhD or pursuing an academic career.
Difficulty and GPA: I know Chemical Engineering has a reputation for being extremely challenging, and I’m concerned about maintaining a competitive GPA.
Graduate education: I’m open to completing a one-year master’s degree after my bachelor’s, potentially in Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, or Molecular Engineering.
I genuinely enjoy chemistry and biology, but I’m not particularly passionate about thermodynamics or traditional industrial processes.
My biggest concern with BME is potentially having fewer job opportunities compared to ChemE, while my biggest concern with ChemE is the workload and whether the curriculum would actually align with my interests.
For those working in biotech/pharma or who studied either major:
Would Chemical Engineering with a biochemical concentration be the safer and more versatile choice, or could Biomedical Engineering offer comparable career opportunities and salaries, especially with a master’s degree?
Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone!

I’m a Master’s student in Chemical Engineering, and I’m looking for reliable websites, apps, and online platforms that can help me with my final-year project (PFE).

I’m particularly interested in resources that allow me to:

Find scientific articles, research papers, and theses related to my topic.

Access reliable scientific databases and academic publications.

Discover current research topics and recent studies in Chemical Engineering.

Organize my references and citations.

Use AI tools to understand scientific papers and summarize complex information.

I would really appreciate it if you could share your favorite websites, apps, or tools, especially free ones that are useful for students.

Thank you

Hello.

So I have been working in OPS for 18 months as a production engineer for a large operator. I have learned more than I could’ve ever wished at my very old plant. I never had a manager until about 9 months into my role and I did everything in my power to learn the plant and every unit operation in my jurisdiction. Look OPS was cool, but to say it has not affected my mental health is a lie. Some of what I’ve done of course includes daily troubleshooting, incident investigations, PHA’s etc. My favorite thing I have done included managing an entire turnaround (developing full scope of work, full lockout plan, all directions to operations for when to take down equipment, managed contractor for two major tank cleanings, started the plant back up etc.) I did everything in my power to become an invaluable resource for the operators, but I feel my drive has been taken advantage of.

My current manager is clueless when it comes to how to run our unit ops. He would rather point fingers and direct than learn which honestly just pisses me off. Our training is abysmal, and most of the management is too scared of lawyers to punish any operators for genuine f ups that put themselves or others in danger. What this means is I have to eat the shit and deal with the culture of could care less people that has been bred there (there are some good operators who will call me, send emails for heads up, etc.)
or we have downtime and I’m held accountable. I feel I am always fire fighting because a grown man/woman just decided to not do what they are paid to do.

Like I said, my mental health has been severely affected and I realize this. I live by myself, across the country from my family and I poured my all into trying to be the best green engineer and learn everything. For a while, I had no friends in my city until I happened to meet my upstairs apartment neighbor who introduced me to others my age (very thankful). I honestly got to a pretty dark spot this summer, haven’t felt that hopeless and broken in a long time. I since feel like I have broken out of that melancholy, but I feel all of it has been driven by my lack of anything in life besides work. I have to make it to February to avoid paying any relocation back, but as soon as I do will be looking elsewhere. Some days I feel the stress is going to make me get grey hair (only early mid twenties lol).

I guess I’m wondering, did anyone go through something similar? How much notice should I give when I plan to depart? How could I position myself for a project engineer role in EPC, O&G or Chemicals? (dream is capital project work, open to all of those avenues)

I got a B.S in CHEME, but my first job outside of college is a process controls job doing PLC programing and some Clean in Place(CIP) Optimization work. A lot work dealing with PCS systems, SCADA, and data historian. I travel around in the food and beverage industry, so I learned a lot on the process side of things. I thought I could get a job as a process eng, but I haven't gotten any calls back. I only got calls back from Control's jobs. I feel like I locked myself out of the process industry. I'm also applying to major cities in the Midwest, so maybe city jobs are harder to come by. Did I make a mistake?

Hey, quick question for people who have worked with gas separation/purification:

If you’re given a new process stream, how do you decide what to test first — zeolite, activated carbon, molecular sieve, membrane, solvent system, MOF, etc.?

What actually eliminates an option early: humidity, contaminants, regeneration, P/T, economics, lack of reliable data, previous experience...?

And what part of that decision is usually the biggest pain before lab/pilot testing?

I’m researching how this is done in real projects, not promoting anything.

I am currently in my first week of Mech eng at the university of Leeds, I did A levels Biology chemistry and Maths and got AAA.
Everyone I’ve spoken to has done A level physics (or some course with physics) which is kind of making me feel left out and like chemical engineering is the better choice for me with my A levels, and also with my career choice of maybe going into nuclear even though I might be able to go into that with mech eng but not as easily.
The whole reason I chose mech eng over chem eng was because of its versatility and so more job opportunities, and because of the oil and gas industry declining especially in the uk.
Also I did do a post when I was in yr13 asking about chem eng and a lot of ppl expressed it as inferior to what it once was and the difficulty of getting a job in the industry.

I have until the second week to choose but I can’t really make a decision so any advice is very appreciated 👍