Engineers are from Mars and Businessmen are from Venus.

I was talking to my prof the other day about modern day engineering, petroleum plants and such. One thing that he said was very true.

"When you design a plant to produce a product, your boss will always push you for 100%. And the best thing is as engineers, we know its not possible."

As I go through my module, Chemical Kinetics and Reactor Design, my prof's words were further underlined as I study various reactions, conduct experiments and lay the foundation theory. As much as my boss is anal about achieving maximum productivity, Newton's Three famous Laws stand in the way from realising the impossible. For any given reaction, it is impossible for it to achieve 100% conversion, this inspite of all the futile attempts to tweak various properties of temperature, pressure, composition. "How about adding a catalyst?" No wonder you are not an engineer. A catalyst only speeds up or slows down a reaction! And most cataylsts are not cheap.

Sometimes system incapabilities do hinder your 'immortalised' productivity. The question is not "Can you use the current equipment to extract out the best?". The question is, "How much money are you willing to spend?" Given the current times, who would want to spend millions of dollars upgrading equipment? Mind you, the equipment in our labs today easily cost hundreds and thousands of dollars! And they are so small in size as well! What more big huge equipment that probably would cost you 10 lifetimes to build one.

No offense to the business people, but to have this sort of anal mentality wont get you far. Engineering has always been in my blood, and will always be, now I understand why we engineers are always required. Problem is: with most of our friends picking a much sought after business degree or some sort, who then will be trained enough to manage plants? There you go. To all those who "foolishly" went for it, just have the fighting spirit and audacity to compete among the millions all over the world whom like you, decided to do business. Few fail to realise this with a global mindset though, and it saddens me at the end to find out that you said "oh no, I took the wrong course."

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Sidenote:

To those who think biodiesel is going to save the world, here's some food for thought. Biodiesel is way inferior to our crude oil because the energy it generates when combusted cannot be compared to that of crude oil, hence not suitable to be used for our automobiles. Even as we speak, people are trying to find out what is the ideal composition of crude oil and biodiesel to achieve maximum power. Well, that still is going to deplete our oil resources.

Guys. The gold is now in renewable energy. Not in biodiesel.

So aspiring businessmen and businesswomen, believe it or not, Im telling you the ball is in our court now.