Role of Chemical Engineers in Indian Progress in the Field of Water and Waste Water Engineering!

Among the natural resources essential for sustenance of life on earth, air and water play the most important roles. Though air is the most important resource for life, it is water that has been determining the development of human civilizations on earth. Water   continues to be of prime importance for life and its importance is on an increasing trend as we move on.

When water is in abundance, we normally do not pay much attention to it. But as the population grows with more and more industrialization and human activities, safe water has been becoming a scarce resource for us. 

In the past, we could have lived with simple knowledge about water. But now, knowing more about water is becoming more and more important. Air, water and land constitute the most important environmental issues that concern all human beings on earth now.

As a chemical engineer professionally involved with water and environmental issues, I have been quite fascinated and interested in the topic of water. 

The following are some of the blog articles that I had written where water is the main theme: 

1. My Love and Hate Relationships with Water !

2. Raw Water Filtration: Some Technical Tips For Major Users

3. Water Supply , Sanitation and Solid Waste Management : Why does India Fair Poorly ?

4. How Safe Is Your Drinking Water in India? Be Aware of These!

Water and waste water technologies and engineering require multidisciplinary skills and therefore engineers with chemical engineering background are the most suited to get trained and develop as water experts. In fact, most of the reputed water technology firms of the world now are predominantly run by chemical engineers. It would not be so difficult for young chemical engineers to grasp the various aspects of water technology, water usage and application technology, treatment processes for water and waste water, water quality control, equipment designs, pumping, piping and process instrumentation, automation, water treatment chemicals and the like. Since they possess the basic educational skills to understand the wider scope in the practical field, they would be better equipped to make improvements and developments in the field as they gain field experience. However, most of the Indian industries and utilities seldom realize this and chemical engineers are hardly employed by them for water and waste water related jobs.

Water Brought For Use in An Indian Industry

As a result several of the users of water (in India) are not always not so well versed with the various engineering and technological aspects of water. For any technology to advance, the users also need to have fundamental knowledge and understanding.

During my long experience in the Indian industry, I have mostly found conventional engineers with civil, mechanical and electrical or science backgrounds getting associated with jobs related to water and waste water technology and engineering. Though by experience and on the job learning they keep enhancing their knowledge in this field. But most often there are some grey areas in their understanding that they keep making serious errors in decision making that cause much distress to the industry, without any one really realizing! Many Indian industries and utilities keep incurring heavy losses on account of this neglect or lack of understanding!

On the other hand, the developed nations keep advancing in their knowldge in technology and engineering related to water, waste water and pollution control fields. Many progressive companies have realized the potential of chemical engineering that they keep recruting them and providing them the work platforms for proving their creativity and multidisciplinary engineering education. Most of the high technology companies in the world employ large numbers of chemical engineers. That is true for the technology suppliers in the field of water and waste water engineering as well.

As a result of the lack of understanding of the Indian employers about the potentials of chemical engineering training, the employability of chemical engineers kept on reducing. None of the hundreds of new engineering colleges and institutions in India have chemical engineering as a field of study. I had written about the failure of India in promoting the growth of chemical engineering education in the recent years. Chemical engineering curriculum as developed in the western nations has been so devised as a versatile modern engineering stream that the young chemical engineers are equipped to handly any kind of modern engineering jobs. Unfortunately, many academicians and industry leaders (in India) have pretty no understanding about this!

Most of the chemical engineers trained by the IITs and the other reputed colleges in India migrate to the western worlds due to the lack of opportunities in India. Fortunately, the developed nations realize the value of these engineers and do provide them the opportunities to prove their skills. The loss of India is gain for others!

Remember the comments of some writers that appeared in the social media in the recent past. The critics highlighted about some chemical engineers of India from the IITs venturing in to jobs and business ventures that are not even remotely connected to their basic engineering studies! Of course, the Indian industry and the policy makers caused them to shift away from their basic training and be successful in other fields. True, India gained at the cost of some critical field of work!

When I began to write today's blog, my idea was to provide some information to those who might need some good information about water and waste water technologies. I know, my thoughts have shifted from the original.

I realized that it is not so important for me to duplicate the knowledge that is already available and accessible to the public as published in the various internet sites. 

Yet, people who are not so conversant with the subject of water may find it difficult to get the appropriate information using the internet search engines due to their lack of understanding in the key words that they need to use for such purposes.

Therefore, in this article, I attempt to give some important links to some useful websites that provide the much needed water and waste water related information. A click on these linked titles below would take the reader to the pages where more information can be found. Besides, these key words could be used to find more reading materials.

One of the websites that provide much information about water and wastewater, especially for industrial users is the site of M/s.Lenntech BV Netherlands. This company specializing in water and waste water technologies is a business venture started by a group of Dutch chemical engineers in their university campus some two decades ago. Will the Indian universities allow their students to do some thing similar? Never! And that is one of the reasons why India could so far not mature to the status of a developed nation from the perpetual conundrum that keeps it self declared as a developing nation! 

Coming back to the most important information that one can get from the Lenntech site, I find the following interesting and informative:

1. Salient features of integrated turn-key water and waste water treatment projects by Lenntech 

2. Information on containerized Water and Wastewater treatment plants as supplied by Lenntech

3. Definitions on process water, demineralized water (DM water), drinking water, drinking water standards , drinking water standard comparison,  Irrigation water, Ultra pure water, etc

4. Salient information about water treatment technologies such as : sea water desalination, surface water treatment,   Water softening, water disinfection, water re-mineralization ,  Membrane Bio-Reactor (MBR), Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor (MBBR), Waste Water Treatment, Pesticide removal from water, Iron removal from water, Arsenic removal from water, Heavy metal removal from water, Nitrates removal from water, Ion exchange water treatement, Reverse Osmosis (RO) Water treatment, etc

5. Water and waste water calculators for process engineers

6. Water treatment equipment information on: sediment filters, sand filters, Activated Carbon Filters, Iron Removal Filter Plants, Arsenic Filters, Remineralization Filters, Electro De-ionization (EDI), Oil filtration, Nano Filtration/ Ultra Filtration/ Micro Filtration, Coagulation/Flocculation,  Clarification,  Adsorption, Chemical Oxidation, Catalytic Wet Air Oxidation, Sludge treatment, Thickening, Stabilization, Centrifugation dewatering, etc

7. Information on Water treatment Chemicals, Water testing instruments, Water testing Lab Procedures, etc

Various types of pumps, valves, pipes/pipe fittings and other chemical process equipment are used for water treatment and industrial waste water treatment and sewage treatment plants.

The technology of water and waste water treatment plants employ various unit processes and unit operations of chemical engineering. Experienced chemical engineering companies are the developers of many modern water treatment technologies and they put the chemical engineering theories to practice.

With the advancement of human needs and comforts, advanced materials and equipment are getting produced year after year. This in turn burdens the environment and causes air and water pollution. To reverse the bad effects of water pollution, we need to develop new technologies that can offset the water pollution by appropriate water and waste water treatment technologies. 

Waterborne diseases are on the rise now-a-days and it is necessary to know the causes and the remedial measures. There are various microbes that causes problems for drinking water supplies.

Microbes also create problems for industrial water consumers.  But some microorganisms can be effectively used for treating waste waters that are rich in biologically degradable wastes such as municipal sewage and industrial wastewaters containing organic contaminants. Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) are two parameters commonly used to measure the organic contamination of water.

Wastewater treatment plants where BOD treatment is predominantly done using biological processes is commonly called BOD plants. 

Another informative website that I would recommend for those interested in enhancing their water related knowledge is the website of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In this site one can find useful information on a number of topics such as: Drinking water test (analytical) methods, Drinking Water Regulations, Anaerobic digestion, Classification of water types, Water pollution control guidelines, Source water protection, wastewater technology fact sheets, etc.

Water and wastewater engineering and technology is a vast field which needs to be given importance for any country to progress in a sustainable manner. 

Awareness in about the various aspects of water , in my opinion, should start right from the schools and there should be efforts to enhance this awareness among the populace.

The government of India now has began to take up this issue in a big way. Recently, some understanding has been signed between India and Canada for the exchange of clean water technologies.

But Indian industry and the big and small Indian cities are pretty poor in understanding the importance of water for them. As a result, they tend to neglect this area and keep proceeding as if they were in the 19th century! As a result, Indian water and waste water plant projects take decades to complete! Even when completed, they fail to provide the desired usefulness.

On the other hand, the water technology companies in the private sector in India has been making good progress and many of them are competent to handle any kind of water treatment challenges. Many of them are trying to market water technologies that are developed in the developed nations in India. 

Unfortunately, many of their potential Indian clients do not have the essential skills to realize the benefits of the new technologies or to make use of the available technologies in a knowledgeable manner! 

There exists a wide gap between the knowledge levels of the suppliers and the users! This actually creates a big challenge for the Indian water and waste water technology suppliers.

The knowledge and competency levels of the Indian policy makers seems to be text bookish with no practical experience. This creates the Indian policy makers to copy foreign rules and regulations on water and water pollution control to be imposed on the Indian industry without really understanding the various technological implications. With poor technical understanding, it would be easy for interpreting the rules in any manner the authorities prefer. This poses many challenges to the Indian industry as a whole!

Unless the competency and knowledge levels among the users, suppliers, policy makers and interpreters go hand in hand, this area would remain as a difficult one. 

The Clean Ganga Mission could also misfire just as its earlier version, the Ganga Action Plan in such a scenario!

This has no doubt affected the Indian efforts in improving the environmental developmental issues with regard to water and air. 

Indian companies can take challenges in water and waste water engineering and technologies. There are young Indian engineers who can take such challenges. Unfortunately, Indian technocrats, both in the private and public domains, do not have the managerial confidence to take up the challenges their own! That is precisely due to their lack of comprehensive understanding in this field!

If India still keeps looking to foreign nations for technologies on water and wastewater, it is because of the lack of confidence in its top decision making levels.

It would be interesting to watch the developments in India in this field in the years to come!

The Accursed Country of Power Production: What is the Way Out?

Today I was reading an article written by Priyadarshini Sen published recently by the Outlook Magazine as one of its national cover story. The article is titled 'Accursed County' and it deals with the negative side of the thoughtless infrastructural development that has been taking place in India in the past. 

If you have not read this article, I suggest you read it online by clicking the hyper-linked title above.

The author has painstakingly brought out the severe air, water and land pollution that apparently results from the several thermal power plants that have been in operation in and around Sonbhadra district of Uttar Pradesh state.

This district, from techno-commercial angle, is ideal for setting up of thermal power plants. In and around there are coal mines that produce coal suitable for power generation. It has abundant source of water from Sone River and it tributary, the Rihand River and the artificial dam built across the latter creating the Gobind Ballabh Pant Sagar reservoir. More importantly, the district provided vast tracts of inexpensive land for setting up the power plants.

And this techno-commercial viability naturally attracted the public sector and private sector industrial enterprises to set up their thermal power stations in this place. Sonbhadra now produces about 11000 MW of electrical power which is about 10 % of the gross thermal power production capacity of India. It is a very good contribution to power starved India.

Those associated with the power industry and those advocates of fast track development naturally dismiss the environmental adversities as nothing serious. For every good thing, there will be some bad effects as well. They say.

But can it be dismissed that way? Shouldn't we a bit more concerned? Should we not be concerned with the poor populace of the place who are the victims (of pollution)? Shouldn't we concerned with the health problems of the people living here?

This is the issue that the author of the outlook cover story highlights. 

What are the reasons for pollution from thermal power plants? Can we not eliminate it? 

Being a technical person associated with various aspects of thermal power plant design, operation, maintenance and also its complex technicalities of environmental pollution control, I personally feel that the thermal power plant pollution effects can be mitigated to a large extent, provided the people concerned with the thermal power plant industry are a bit more technically and administratively serious with the matter.

First, let us understand the common cause for the pollution problem attributable to thermal power plants. 

Thermal power plants generate electricity by running steam turbines that drive large electric alternators commonly called generators. The steam turbines rotate at high speeds due to the energy transmitted through high pressure steam which is produced in large boilers by burning pulverized coal.

Coal which normally lies hundreds of meters below earth, contains essentially carbon and hydrocarbon compounds. The carbon and carbon compounds gives coal its calorific value or fuel value. Coal also has several mineral compounds within its complex structure which do not have any fuel value. It is generally called the coal ash.

The main constituent of coal ash is silica (silicon dioxide). It also has other mineral oxides and compounds of aluminium, magnesium and also small quantities of minerals containing mercury, phosphorous, etc. Some coal ash may also contain very small quantities of radio active minerals.

The carbon compounds of coal burns and produce heat energy and some gases such as Carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, water vapor, hydrogen sulfide, etc. For aiding burning of coal, large quantities of air is required and while burning the oxygen in air is consumed and the rest gases are let out through the chimneys which contains other gaseous products of coal combustion.

The non fuel mineral content of coal does not burn. It comes out as ash particles after coal combustion. Indian coals contain large quantities of ash, as high as 45%. Every one ton of coal burnt produces nearly half a ton of ash.

Large thermal power plants use pulverized coal for efficient burning. Pulverized coal is coal which is finely powdered in coal mills which when carried with air behaves almost like a gaseous fuel.

Thus the ash which comes out of pulverized coal burning in thermal power plants is in the form of fine particles. This ash is commonly called the 'fly ash'. If left out it also gets discharged in to the atmosphere through the chimneys along with the chimney gases. A 100 MW power plant burns nearly 1000 tonnes of coal per hour. If the ash content of coal is 30% that means it has the potential to discharge 300 tonnes of ash dust to the atmosphere every hour! With that kind of a dust discharge, no one could live near a power plant!

Thermal power plants therefore use many air pollution control equipment to control the pollution caused from fly ash that could discharge out from it.  

The best fly ash arresting equipment is the electro-static precipitator or ESP. When designed and operated properly, it can remove fly ash from the chimney gases almost entirely. The fly ash removal efficiency of an ESP could be as high as 99.999%. Nevertheless, this efficiency can drop much when the ESPs are either with inferior design or operated without care or without proper maintenance.

Besides, the ESPs cannot tackle the pollution caused by gaseous pollutants like the oxides of carbon, sulphur, nitrogen etc. 

The fly ash arrested by the ESPs are either collected in dry form and could be used to make pozzolana grade cements. It can also be used to make fly ash bricks. In most power plants, the fly ash is made as a slurry using water and discharged in to a large holding reservoir called the ash pond. Normally, the ash pond is designed to hold the ash produced in a power plant for about 50 years. A filled up ash pond could be a source for raw material for making fly ash bricks. The government of India has recently made it compulsory for all builders and colonizers to use fly ash bricks for reducing the pile up of fly ash in the thermal power plant ash ponds.

Nature has an in built capacity to absorb and degrade all normal pollution caused by human activities. However, when this natural capacity is exceeded, we need to have artificial pollution control systems.

Now let us see what has created the Sonbhadra syndrome. First the ideal techno-economics have caused a concentration of power plants in this area overlooking the natural limits of the region to absorb environmental impacts. While it could have possibly withstood the impact of 2000 MW of thermal power generation, the authorities have allowed it to have 11000 MW thermal power production. This problem is not unique to Sonebhadra. Korba district of Chhattisgarh State which is another power hub of India which may also be an environmentally failed zone if not managed properly!

These areas are burning millions of tonnes of coal an hour. Imagine the oxygen depletion in these districts! Will the green forests of these areas replenish this much oxygen? Perhaps not.

The designers of the power plants ask for various input data such as the average ash content for designing their ESPs. Suppose that they had designed the plants with a maximum ash content of 30% and now the plants are getting coal with average ash content above that limit. Obviously, the power plant chimneys spew the balance fly ash to the atmosphere. Imagine the quantum of hourly tonnes of fly ash getting distributed to the atmosphere through the power plant chimneys in such a situation! In case the power plants do not get operated properly with regard to the air pollution control norms, the ambient air quality of the area deteriorates from what is stipulated as admissible by the central pollution control board. Poor ambient air quality caused by the thermal power plants enhances the level of particulate matter (PM) and respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) in the ambient air. The particulates dispersed to air from power plant chimneys might contain toxic element compounds such a mercury, arsenic, phosphorous, sulphur and the like. When exposed to it for a long term, they could cause serious health hazards to people.

Improper operation and management of the power plants with regard to air, water and land pollution control methodologies adversely affect the environment around the thermal power plants. This happens due to various reasons such as production vs. pollution control priorities of the plant management, inadequate pollution control facilities and incompetence of the plant personnel in understanding pollution causes and its abatement. Of these, the latter plays a very important role.

Thermal power plants generally employ mechanical and electrical engineers for the operation and maintenance of the plants. These engineers are mostly concerned with power production and they are often pressurized to meet the production targets at any cost. The major concern for them is to get the coal, unload it, store it, pulverize it, burn it and run their turbo-generators. These are the operation and maintenance tasks of the mechanical engineers. The electrical engineers of the power station look after the electrical tie lines, the electrical switch gear and the auxiliary equipment electrics. The priorities for all of them are for maintaining the production and the plant load factor. The pollution control equipment operation and maintenance are also entrusted among this group. Pollution control equipment and systems are viewed as those creating obstructions to production and there is always a tendency for the plant personnel to give low priority for maintaining them under the best performance levels.

Thermal power plants also may have a small group of technical people who are entrusted with the water, water treatment, laboratory tests for ensuring equipment performance, quality, etc. They may also be entrusted with the task of pollution monitoring.

In a thermal power station in India, the stress is for production. The power station management personnel are often from the group of engineers associated with mechanical or electrical operations who have been conventionally trained to work hard for achieving high production targets. They are trained to ignore any thing that hampers production or any thing that causes a lowering of production.

Thus air pollution control and other pollution control or quality control aspects become pinching issues for the majority technical personnel and the top management authorities of all thermal power stations in India. With the result that they try to be dominant over all issues concerned with pollution control or quality control. This is a fact of the day.

Indian thermal power stations do not employ trained chemical engineers who have interdisciplinary technical back ground to develop as technical experts who could effectively understand and tackle the intricate technical problems of environment, water, air and the land and its linkages to the various production processes involving fuel and burner management, water management, steam generation, etc.

Some three and a half decades ago, by working in a thermal power plant as a lone chemical engineer I could experience this problem. It was a well thought experimental idea of some visionary management team of those years that could induct me to the thermal power plant. Under normal circumstances, then or now, chemical engineers are hardly inducted in thermal power plants!

In a thermal power power station, if the ESP efficiency is down by 1 % the effect could be catastrophic in the long run. On the other hand, by overlooking the ESP efficiency, the plant operation personnel might be able to enhance the production to some extent. Production and pollution control are two antagonistic agendas in the Indian industry in general.

Awareness programs and punitive initiatives under pollution control perhaps have done some impact. But what is lacking now is the technical knowledge and the expertise to tackle the environmental issues confidently. The environmentalists of India are mostly academicians and theoreticians who make hue and cries outside and not work inside to actually do some real work to eliminate pollution cost effectively! In India, there is hardly any mobility of engineers between Research and Development, academics and the industry. Either sides are maintained too water tight for that to happen.

India has grossly neglected the need for training chemical engineers who are with the basic knowledge to tackle many interdisciplinary technical issues when they are exposed and trained in the real technical fields. This has happened because, the few trained chemical engineers did not find opportunities within India to prove their expertise and develop. The Indian industry recruiters and policy makers unfortunately have little idea about the usefulness of chemical engineers. Many even do not understand the difference between a chemist and a chemical engineer! For example, the thermal power industry of India with all the need for chemical engineers seldom thought about it! In India things go as per conventions and no one hardly think of changing the conventions. Changing the conventions can only be done by progressive societies and progressive people with higher intellectual capacities! India lacks such people in key leadership positions!

Now, as chemical engineering training has become almost non existent in India, it is all the more difficult for getting good chemical engineers for the various interdisciplinary tasks such as that posed by environmental pollution control and utility system engineering.

All these are essentially because of vested interest individuals with inadequate expertise who are in academics and policy planning in India. So long as expertise is something determined by the ability of a person to hoodwink the nominating authorities, this situation is not going to change in this country.

Pollution control laws and enforcement in India have been very lenient. Environmental regulations have also become a tool used by the authorities to exert their control over the industry rather than using it honestly for the benefit of the people. This results in severely polluting industries escaping from any punitive actions while new projects getting unduly delayed for environmental clearances.

It is time that we set aside self interests and move towards greater national interests. When that happens, our country would no longer have accursed counties. It will have only blessed counties! And India would indeed become 'Swachh Bharat' (Clean India) as envisaged by its visionary new PM, Shri Narendra Modi. 

India has no dearth of technical expertise to manage problems of this nature. What it really lacks is the will, honesty and administrative competence of its key functionaries holding key governmental positions!

Let us earnestly hope for positive changes in the near future!

Chemical Engineering : A Launch that Failed to get Momentum after Take Off !

As an engineering student I learnt chemical engineering, the modern day engineering discipline which equips a student to get familiarized with various knowledge inputs, theories and mathematical tools that are required for designing and operating various kinds of process plant systems concerned with all kinds of gases, liquids and solids and their physio-chemical conversions.

As part of the curriculum, I remember getting introduced to various topical concepts such as Fluid and Particle Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Transport Phenomena, Instrumentation, Process Control, Stoichiometry, Unit Operations, Unit Processes, etc, etc with necessary equipping inputs in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and fundamentals of established conventional engineering such as civil engineering, mechanical engineering and electrical and electronics engineering.

Those who devised this relatively new branch of engineering perhaps thought of having a better trained lot of professionals for designing and operating complex automated chemical process plants such as the oil refineries, the fertilizer plants, the petrochemical complexes, mineral processing plants, bulk industrial chemical production plants and the like with a better understanding of the multi-disciplinary skills required for such complex industrial production units of modern times.[For those interested in knowing the history and origin of chemical engineering click here or here !]

If  conventional engineering disciplines such as Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering   originated as what we know today as a result of the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries in UK and Europe which instigated professionalism in modern civilization, Electrical Engineering and Chemical Engineering was on account of a similar professionalism of some US academicians a century later.

Chemical Engineering being more modern got a curriculum cramped with much of the information from the former engineering disciplines and some more of its own from the Industrial Chemistry and Applied Physical Sciences.

In that way, Chemical Engineering offered the students a much broader aspects of knowledge about the modern industrial technology and was thought to equip the newly trained engineers with better inter disciplinary skills that are required to work in the complex industries of the twentieth century.

From my personal experience, I can say that those who got trained as a chemical engineer is in a better position to grasp the interdisciplinary complexities of the modern day industries where physio-chemical processes are employed for various kinds of production activities.

Stringent statutory stipulations in industrial safety and environmental issues coupled with the economics of production caused greater opportunities and challenges for chemical engineering. Higher demands of instrumentation and process control automation incorporating modern day advances of digital electronics added more complexity to this field of studies. Developments in corrosion sciences and modern materials of construction technologies enhanced the burden of diverse knowledge in chemical engineering.

As a result chemical engineering began disintegrating into more and more specialized fields. Petroleum and Petrochemical engineering, Bio-chemical Engineering, Environmental Engineering, etc came into being as a result of academic initiatives in the last few decades.

However, the enthusiastic universities that went ahead with specialized fields of studies some how appeared to care little to create equivalent awareness about such courses and their benefits in the minds of the industrial planners and decision makers.

This has caused the recruiters often forgetting to include such advancely trained candidates from their essential qualification specifications for their new recruits or to allot a lesser intakes for such candidates.

The result was lesser career opportunities for those who ventured to learn more. This resulted in vacant seats in the universities which offered advanced courses.

This in turn created a shortage of adequately trained people for the industries, the latter resorting to place conventionally trained engineers even in specialized interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary areas for which they lacked the necessary background knowledge. This resulted in poor technical management of industries causing poor industrial safety and higher Operational and Maintenance costs.

A vicious circle has been created !

Let me cite the example of India. In the days when I was a student some four decades ago, chemical engineering was one of the most sought after disciplines of engineering.

Now it is not. No new engineering colleges which came into existence in this country in the past one and a half decade period offer chemical engineering as a course of study. Chemical engineering is offered only in the elite and old institutions. Even in those, the responses from the students are lukewarm due to the collapse of career opportunities in this branch of engineering.

At the same time engineers who work in the industry, like me in senior positions, feel the shortage of adequately trained chemical engineers in the intake levels who could take up the industrial challenges.

In India, the massive exodus of fresh engineers of any discipline to non-engineering field of works should be another concern for any body who has long term thoughts on human resource planning.

I would like to get feed backs and opinions on the issue that I just highlighted from engineering academicians, students and engineers working in the industries.

Update-1 [4-12-12]

Let me thank all those who gave their comments so far.

There are two professional bodies in India which are supposed to take care of the professional development needs of the chemical engineers. These are:

1. The Institution of Engineers (India) : This body is for all engineers including ChE.

2. The Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers (IIChE) : This body is exclusively for ChE.

Though these professional bodies are doing some work in organizing professional seminars and conferences or conducting associateship examinations, their contribution in ensuring good career prospects to those who have chosen this discipline, on a broader perspective, is not so commendable. They lack the will to take up major issues with the government or the Industry. Their activities in the recent years appear to be more of a routine nature than some thing of a proactive nature.

There are some industries in India who have realized the benefits of having ChEs in their technical and general management streams. These industries usually provide a good career opportunity for the ChEs.

However, in many other industries and areas, jobs which are most suited to ChEs are professionally diluted due to the ignorance of their top management. In such industries, brilliant ChEs get entrapped in an intellectual and professional dilemma, making them soon losing their interest in professional work.

Many bright ChEs are compelled to switch over to other areas of work which has nothing to do with their background training and education.

In the 1950's handful of ChEs passed out with degrees in India from one or two engineering institutions. In 2012, this should be to the tune of about 6000 [ I do not have any correct information. This is a mere estimate. There are nearly 165 engineering institutions now having a department of ChE. Assuming that they are capable of training an average of 40 ChEs every year, then the number should be about 6600. Besides, the IIChE and the IE(I) conducts their own associateship examinations in ChE which is equivalent to a Bachelors degree such as the BSChE, BScEngg (ChE), BE or BTech (ChE). All the engineering colleges that impart training in ChE are reputed institutions who have been in existence for quite some years. The majority of Indian engineering colleges established in the private sector in the last 10-15 years do not have a ChE department.

For a country of India's population and size, this is a small number. Since ChEs are comparitively short supply, their employability is better as compared to the other disciplines now.

In this context, I find this paper  presented by Mr Sharu S Ratnekar in one of the conferences of ChEs an interesting reading.

[Chemical Engineers-Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow ] 

It would be of help to all , if you express your views and reactions.