CHEMICAL ENGINEERING occupies a special place among scientific and engineering disciplines. It is an
 engineering discipline with deep roots in the world of atoms, molecules, and molecular transformations. The
 principles and approaches that make up chemical engineering have a long and rich history of contributions to the
 nation's technological needs. Chemical engineers play a key role in industries as varied as petroleum, food,
 artificial fibers, petrochemicals, plastics, ceramics, primary metals, glass, and specialty chemicals. All these
 depend on chemical engineers to tailor manufacturing technology to the requirements of their products and to
 integrate product design with process design. Chemical engineering was the first engineering profession to
 recognize the integral relationship between design and manufacture, and this recognition has been one of the
 major reasons for its success.
 This report demonstrates that chemical engineering research will continue to address the technological
 problems most important to the nation. In the chapters that focus on these problems, many of the discipline's core
 research areas (e.g., reaction engineering, separations, process design, and control) will appear again and again.
 The committee hopes that by discussing research frontiers in the context of applications, it will illustrate both the
 intellectual excitement and the practical importance of chemical engineering.
 The research frontiers discussed in this report can be grouped under four overlapping themes: starting new
 technologies, maintaining leadership in established technologies, protecting and improving the environment, and
 developing systematic knowledge and generic tools. These frontiers are described in detail in Chapters 3 through