History

The Chemical Engineering Department of the Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology in the early days of the Ahsanullah Engineering College was one of the smaller departments. It was small both in terms of space and laboratories as well as teachers and students. Not many students used to opt for this department since job opportunities were almost nill. The first batch of five chemical engineering graduates passed out in 1952. Till 1955 only twelve chemical engineers had graduated from this department. The department produced no graduates in the years 1957 and 1958. In 1959 there were seven graduates, and from then onwards, the department began to grow. More and more students began opting for chemical engineering.

The teaching of chemical engineering was initiated by a group of dedicated teachers who despite their basic training in a different discipline sacrificed familiar subjects of great personal pride to undertake the difficult task of introducing the new discipline to the employers, developing new courses and producing a corps of chemical engineers who could convince the employers of their usefulness as well as uniqueness. In around 1957, Dr. O.P. Bergelin of the University of Delaware came to teach in this department under an exchange programme. He stayed in the department for about five years and his influence is still felt around us through some of his students who are now teachers here.

During the early days there was only one teaching laboratory namely, Unit Operations Laboratory. New laboratories which have been setup over the years include Corrosion Laboratory, Kinetics Laboratory, Fuel and Petroleum Processing Laboratory, Mass Transfer Laboratory, Particle Technology Laboratory, Fluid Flow Lab., etc. The department now possesses facilities for research in areas of Reaction Engineering and Oil and Gas Processing. The department possesses computer facilities for the use of undergraduate and post-graduate students. New equipment and facilities for Process Control and Environmental Engineering Laboratories have been procured under BUET-University of Alberta institutional linkage project funded by Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Location