The Future is Bright for Chemical Engineers: Six Promising Careers

 

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Usually, employers and CEOs cast their eyes over quick-fix achievements for mini milestones. Breaking the tradition, today we’ll look at some outstanding careers for chemical engineers. Newspapers and online blogs usually produce articles suggesting possible careers the field would produce in near future. The term “chemical engineering” isn’t just associated with purely chemicals. Engineers readily provide their expertise in safety, biotech, design, environment and process engineers. Let’s not wait any longer and look at the details!

1. Space Fuel Processor

With dawn of commercial space travel like Virgin Galactic; there’s a chance competition would drive down the travel price, making space flight more common. Space tour initially comprise approximately two to three hours of sub-orbital flight however there’s a chance it’ll extend to days and even weeks when visiting distant planets. It may sound absurd today but not quite impossible as chemical engineers are working diligently to find new fuel sources. Bio-refineries, hydrogen farms, wind farms, algae factories and fusion technology are some neat examples applicable to space travel fuel.

2. Uranium Recycler

Alternative energy sources like solar, tidal, wind and hydrogen will gain more prominence. However, focus in present times is more diverted towards nuclear energy. Uranium scarcity is damaging the plan but engineers working as uranium recyclers will transform bomb-grade uranium, extracted from warheads to lower enriched. This recycled, low-energy uranium will be used in nuclear power plants, ensuring there’s no shortage and ultimately no energy crisis.

3. Genetic Farmers

Reverse engineering has been looked upon with great interest and raised number of possibilities to ensure quality living. Future farmers won’t just grow livestock but genetically engineered plants are known to have more proteins and fibres. Vaccinated plants are already produced by chemical engineers and finest example of this is tobacco plants carrying antibodies for Ebola serum. This is surely going to be one area where genetic farmers would focus most. Many chemical industries in Saudi Arabia are already investing in genetic engineering so that’s one place you should find employment opportunities.

4. Nanotech Manufacturer

The field of nanotechnology has already witnessed outstanding growth in recent times. It’s all about manipulating minute matter that hardly measures 1 to 100 nanometres. Further advancement in the field raises likelihood of exceptional opportunities in the field.

5. Galactic Engineering

Barack Obama; president of United States in 2014’s budget announced $105 million to fund astronauts on a mission to reach an asteroid by 2025. If the mission is successful, it’ll definitely bring lots of precious minerals from space. Galactic chemical engineering is about mining distant asteroids and planets for resources and creating a system to continue working in extreme environments. It’ll ultimately improve quality of living for earthlings.

6. Climate Change Reverse Engineer

As Earth’s climate is changing at a rapid pace, new breed of chemical engineers emerged to alleviate the effect. They need to practice multi-disciplinary solutions to solve pertinent issues. Chemical engineers are currently working on different models predicting the outcome of climate change and countermeasures. In future, they’ll need working on long-term strategies to counter adverse climatic effects on environment while coming up with a plan to reduce potential damage. Work typically involves refine energy system, rebuild ecosystem and develop energy distribution strategies.

Looking at the list of careers, indeed it seems future is bright for chemical engineering.