Chemical Engineering

One of the four traditional main branches of engineering: the study of industrial processes that convert raw materials into useful substances and the properties of the matter those processes work with. This branch groups the technology atlas's own material-and-process family of fields: Chemical Engineering itself (process design, chemical plants, reaction engineering), Materials Engineering (the properties and design of structural and functional materials), Metallurgical Engineering (the extraction, refining and alloying of metals), Petroleum Engineering (the extraction and processing of oil and gas), Nuclear Engineering (fission and fusion technology), Textile Engineering (fiber and fabric processing), Nanotechnology (engineering at the nanometer scale), Biological Engineering (engineering applied to living systems and biological processes) and Energy Engineering (the generation, conversion and storage of energy). Does not belong here: the mechanical machinery a chemical or materials process runs on, grouped under Mechanical Engineering, or the electrical instrumentation and control systems layered on top of a chemical plant, grouped under Electrical Engineering.