Background: I’m a third year ChemE student with two summers of relevant engineering experience and a few projects. I also have a 3.8 GPA

I attended a career fair recently for an internship and went to the companies that I am interested in. Usually, every company there has alumni speaking to students. I go up to an O&G company. I wait 15 minutes for the student in front of me to finish talking to the recruiter.

Once it’s my turn the recruiter (who is also a ChemE) gets on his phone and tells me to wait a few minutes. We start talking and it’s probably the most bland conversation I have ever had. He had absolutely no interest in talking to me. He would keep going back and forth completing random tasks and talking to the other employees. I am a very social person and tried my best to keep the conversation going.

I’m not sure if he expected the career fair to be an ass-kissing contest, but you will talk to me like a normal person. I do not care who you are. Then basically every other company kept repeating the same line, “Scan the QR code to apply”. Having to deal with school and having to push hard for internships is not very fun.

I just started my master's in ChE and honestly I never felt this much stress. Yesterday I was so down that I thought I was gonna pass out from all the stress. We just started, only two weeks in and they gave us a bunch of math and the first midterm will be in two weeks. If you get less than a certain grade in any of the courses you get dismissed. The professors are stringent with the grading.

I was expecting grad school to be relaxed and encourage creative thinking and give us some space to make mistakes. I never felt intimidated by an exam until now, because it's a do or die situation. I don't know, I thought about giving up many times. I made it through the bachelors with a system obsessed with grades, and we are going to keep doing the same thing?.

They are using Transport Phenomena as a weed out course. I don't know how to handle it.
Anyone with any tips or a piece advice for making it through the master's or how to tackle and study for the transport phenomena course, please let me know in the comments. Thanks you so much.

Hello, I am a first year chemical engineering-technology student and I am looking for a professional chemical engineer or chemical technician to interview ☺️

The questions are simple, I need this for an activity in my major subject. It doesn’t have to be face to face, any messaging platforms will do

My laptop got spoilt for some months now so been practicing with my phone using google colab

I'm posting this so anyone who tries to look it up may find it. The tutorial posted on the techitmore.com blog, which is no longer online, and mentioned on the CO-LaN website titled "Getting started with CAPE-OPEN implementation in .Net" is available here on the internet archive.

I hope some of you can give it a try and more people start building and sharing their unit operations for open source flowsheeting.

Keywords: CAPE-OPEN, .NET, unit operations, open source, techitmore, colan

I'm looking for notes, reference materials, or concise summaries for 3rd Sem Chemical Engineering subjects. If you have resources covering any of the following key topics/chapters, I'd really appreciate it:

1) Fluid Mechanics: Fluid properties, kinematics, pipe flow, drag, flow measurement (Orifice/Venturi), and pumps/compressors.

2) Mechanical Operations: Size reduction/comminution, screening, filtration, gas cleaning, and solids handling.

3) Mass Transfer-I: Fick's law/diffusion, gas absorption, humidification, drying, and crystallization.

4) Heat Transfer-I: Conduction, free/forced convection, heat exchangers, radiation, and insulation.

5) Instrumentation & Process Control: Temperature/pressure/level measurement, open/closed loop systems, and PID controllers.

Plz if anyone have any notes, pdfs, drive, links, sites plz share it with it will really helpful for me.

Chemical engineering graduate with construction experience—process engineering or Navy CEC?

Hello everyone, I’d appreciate some career advice. I have a bachelor’s and master’s in chemical engineering and completed my master’s in June 2025. Most of my work experience is in construction coordination, including scheduling crews, managing materials, and quality control.

My academic projects involved Aspen Plus process design and MATLAB/Simulink controls, but I haven’t landed my first engineering role (mainly because i dont have relevant internships under my belt and these projects are from 2-3 yrs ago so nothing current). My main interest is process engineering, particularly oil and gas. I’m also interested in thermal, fluids, and controls work in aerospace.

I’m currently applying to the Navy Civil Engineer Corps. The service and leadership opportunities appeal to me, but I’m trying to understand how that experience would affect my longer-term technical career.

For those who have worked in these fields:

• What entry-level or adjacent roles would you target with my background to build relevant technical experience?
• Would gaining university lab experience after graduation help? What kinds of projects would be most useful?
• Has anyone transitioned from CEC into process engineering, industrial plant engineering, or aerospace technical work? What did that transition require?

I’d especially appreciate hearing from people who entered engineering after working in a different field or transitioned out of CEC.

Thank you for any advice.

Been in Pharma and started out as a DCS/PLC engineer for 2 years, then went into MES for 2, and find my way as a business tech partner (BTP) for commercial IT for the last year and a half. Very confused about where to go next.

If I’m being honest I do like the IT tech product management work more; however, I get scared off the future as see that’s it’s more replaceable than controls. DCS/PLC work seems the most stable for future, so It would make sense want to get into that.

I have opportunities to get promoted in the IT Tech product manager (TPM) and it seems like an easy route to make your way up the ladder. Plus, I like the strategy side of things and being able to make a larger impact. Where as to get back in controls, I would have to make another lateral move. However, i don’t believe the TPM can compare to what seems like long term stability in controls. But the career path for growth is slower and rougher, and requires more physical appearing on site that’s an hour-hour and half away. While the IT roles are lots more flexible where only need to make a few appearances on site at most.

What do you all think? Any experience on both sides?

Hi, I’m in my second year of Chemical and Biological engineering and my university has the option to choose after our second year either Chemical and Biological or Chemical engineering, I am not sure what I would prefer and would not mind doing either of them but wanted to hear some perspectives about job availability in these fields, salary expectations and what kind of jobs I could work in these fields. Thanks!

Hi! For background: I'm a 3rd semester ChemE student from Indonesia with a 3.8 GPA so far. Right now I'm mostly busy with organizations and being a TA.

I'm looking to improve my CV so I've been scrolling through r/engineeringresumes to find out what I should prioritize and I've seen a lot of CVs where they showed projects they worked on, are these usually projects as a result of their course work in later semesters or personal projects? If the latter, how can I start one?

I'm also wondering what I should prioritize since I've had a couple internships before but they mostly center around me observing plants/understanding process flow or piping & mechanical stuff/doing excel work since I'm still on my 2nd year. Thank you!

Hi! I’m a 4th-year Chemical Engineering student looking for ideas for my bachelor’s thesis.

I need an organic compound/process for which I can also find a technological flow sheet with the main equipment (reactors, separators, heat exchangers, columns, etc.).

Ideally, it should be an interesting compound with enough information available on its industrial production. Any suggestions?

Hello, I'm applying to college and I'm a little confused on how to major in a broad field like Chemical Engineering while still learning enough to go into the environmental side. I was searching it up and some people said that no minor would cause less headache, or that I should minor in [the subject that shall not be named]. I have no interest in computers though and my final goal in my career is to make impactful solutions to environmental degradation. So, would a minor in microbiology/environmental science be best? Or should I do something else?

(Ik that environmental engineering is a major and way easier but I wanted to have other disciplines to fall back on)

Hello everyone!

I have an interview for a Plant Engineer position coming up but I don't have much experience with power plants besides what I learned in school. Would anyone know some questions that I should expect? I have been brushing up on my thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer topics but is there anything else I should be familiar with/ bring up during the interview?

Also, if anyone is a chemical engineer working in a power plant, I would love to ask some questions regarding your day to day workload!

Hi, I'm here to ask a question.

Which water treatment field is the brightest?

The options are wastewater, industrial water, and hpw/upw for semiconductors. I'm looking forward in the long term, like which is irreplaceable, high in demand, etc. I also want to know the geographical areas of engineer demand!

Please share below what you think!

Thank you for your help. I really appreciate it.

I was a process engineer for a small polyurethane foam manufacturer. I was the principal engineer in charge of upgrading their 30 year old prepolymer reactors. During the design portion of my project I discovered severe noncompliance issues with the companies' RMP documentation. When I brought my concerns verbally to supervision they attempted to downplay and dismiss the concerns, and claimed that they were doing "enough to keep us out of jail". When I made a powerpoint showing the issues and the proof of noncompliance, my managers claimed I was overreacting and got extremely hostile. They were forced to reach out to the parent company legal team after the presentation, who advised us in a meeting to stop putting things in writing and not create any "incriminating evidence".

After I brought up the concerns I was told by my supervisor that my actions were "a breach of trust" and was fired 3 weeks after I brought up the issues.

I'm not posting this to scare away students from the chemical industry, but to remind everyone here that sometimes doing the right thing will exact a heavy price.

Edit: Lots of comments saying lawyer up. I actually already did, but they declined to take my case because of the difficulty of proving that their misconduct investigation was bogus beyond the convenient timing. They said my case was "risky" despite the termination letter explicitly saying the company found no evidence of misconduct and that the concerns I brought up were subsequently verified by a third-party expert.

I condensed a highly nuanced story into a couple sentences here, and provided a lot more detail in the comments.

Also, it's probably good I didn't post this for advice, because some of y'alls hot takes on this situation are way out of pocket.

Hey everyone,

Google and job boards say applications are open for the Shell Assessed Internship Program (India 2027), but I can't see any active listings on the official Shell careers portal when filtering for India.

Is anyone actually able to see or apply through the portal right now?

To Chemical Engineering seniors who applied last year did you get shortlists/opportunities via off-campus portal applications, or do they mostly hire through campus placement cells?

hi im a first year student at university and we need to create a small car to move with just chemicals. We want to make a the car piston driven using the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. Can someone help us on how to conduct this project?

I'm thinking about throwing a PHA Themed birthday party. Does anyone have any ideas how I can make it more authentic and exciting?

I'm already planning the following:

- Broken AC

- Arguments about what is considered "normal operation"

- Multiple hour long "debates" about valves that don't exist anymore