Question: what do you make as a engineer in the world

Jeni Spragg answered on 14 Jun 2016:

I am a chemical engineer, so I don’t build and design physical things in the same way that, for example, a civil engineer might design a bridge, or a mechanical engineer might design an engine. Instead, I can design and manage the processes (or factories) which make the things we need. Everything we use – all the materials, food, medicines, fuels, chemicals, soaps etc., are made my huge industrial processes which are there thanks to chemical engineers.

At the moment, I am researching a process which will hopefully produce hydrogen in a sustainable way. Hydrogen is already used to make lots of different things (such as margarine, converting crude oil to petrol and diesel or fertilizers for farming). It is probably going to be more and more important in the future – especially if we start using hydrogen in our cars. The process I’m working on is quite a clever design which should be less expensive and smaller than the current production methods.