BRIDGING CHEMISTRY AND ENGINEERING

Computational chemists simulate the behavior of the microscopic. Chemical engineers wrest performance from the macroscopic. One would think the twain should never meet But computational chemistry is, in fact, proving to be an extremely useful tool for engineers. The insights gleaned from simulations of the atomistic and molecular wrangling of polymerizations or catalytic reactions can, in turn, shed a surprising amount of light on why an industrial process clogs up or how one auto lubricant is better than another. In industry, where engineers simply can't spend the money or time to perform every experiment that might improve their process or verify if a plant design is going to work, modeling fills an extremely valuable niche. That wasn't always the case. Only in recent years have computers become routinely powerful enough, and theory sophisticated enough, to deal with the monstrous complexities of real-world applications. But now, for a relatively reasonable amount of money and frequently within ...