The Role of Chemical Engineers in Developing Sustainable Building Materials

Chemical engineering in practice involves many first principals that apply to the built environment, some examples include; energy use, chemical material safety, material selection, fluids flow, and cost analysis. The term sustainability is often used as a buzz word but at its core has a multitude of meanings that when applied to the built environment, strongly suggest that dramatically different principals are practiced with regard to materials and the built environment. Therefore, radically altering material function in the built environment is just as important, for example, as developing efficient supply chains that do not negatively impact source resources.

Knowledge. Chemical engineers will need to be armed with the fundamental principles of deep sustainability or be able to work with those that are educated in this field.