Chemical engineers and sound engineering principles have been absent from the discussions of global challenges — energy, climate change, food, and water — for too long, assert Bill Banholzer and Mark Jones of Dow Chemical in their August AIChE Journal Perspective article, “Chemical Engineers Must Focus on Practical Solutions.” Society has thus confused what is possible with what is practical, particularly when it comes to energy, where new discoveries are greeted with over-excitement and the hope that each will provide the means to supply reliable, cheap, and almost-limitless energy, the authors say. They cite the hydrogen economy, cellulosic ethanol, and fuel cells as examples of technologies that have promised much but delivered little
