Chemical engineering addresses many of the world’s greatest challenges faced by society in areas such as energy, environment, health, water and food. The ability to design and optimise processes and solve problems means that chemical engineers are in high demand.

As we move to a more technologically advanced and sustainable future, chemical engineers will provide the innovation and leadership to decarbonise industry, manufacture products from sustainable feedstocks, advance healthcare by designing and manufacturing personalised medicines and digitally transform the chemicals industry.

Our team of expert academics will educate you in core chemical engineering subjects, along with chemical engineering practice and design. You’ll have the opportunity to learn advanced chemical engineering topics such as digital design, machine learning, intensified processes and product formulation – disciplines that are the future of chemical engineering.

Studying a chemical engineering degree at Leeds will provide you with the fundamental concepts and new skills used by the modern chemical engineer. You’ll develop the specialist knowledge, skills and experience you need to begin your career in this highly valued profession and make a real impact in the field of chemical sciences and engineering.

This course offers you the chance to learn and practice the fundamentals of chemical engineering with the flexibility to tailor the degree to your interests through specialist pathways in digital manufacturing and processes, energy engineering, materials engineering and nuclear engineering.

Embedded within your chemical engineering programme are opportunities to develop your professional skills such as teamwork, communication, presenting, report writing, project management, self-learning and ethics. In addition to technical competency, these skills are highly desired in industry.

During your degree, you’ll have lots of opportunities to develop laboratory skills. Chemical engineering labs go from the basic skills training in year 1, to you running several unit operations yourself in year 2. Then, it’s onto a challenging discovery lab in year 3, where you’ll design the experiment to test a hypothesis, collect and analyse data before iterating your approach to get to the solution.

Ethics plays an integral role in the engineering practices of today, which is why you’ll study engineering ethics as part of your course. You’ll be taught by academics from the Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied Centre, as well as your lecturers, covering a wide range of topics such as professionalism and codes of conduct, corporate social responsibility, engineering and responsibility, ethics in innovation and research ethics.

The ethics training will advance your critical thinking, communication and creative problem-solving skills which are crucial to employers, while also helping you to identify and respond effectively to ethical dilemmas that you may encounter in your professional life in the engineering industry.

Each academic year, you’ll take a total of 120 credits.