Differences Between Technology and Engineering in General and Focusing

on this Difference as Related to Chemical Engineering

Although the two terms technology and engineering are interlaced, the principles of
each subject and their capabilities are quite different. Generally, definition of technology is
broader than that of engineering, and from a normative standpoint, it is a part of
coevolution process with society. Technology emerges from ideas and wills for creating
and utilizing the artifacts that fulfill human needs or desires. The outcome of technology is
just producing and employing objects, and it does not depend upon thinking and using
design equations, theories, etc. Accordingly, skills and arts without specific knowledge are
sufficient in creating and managing the technology. Understanding and improving the
existing technology, or resolving the problems pertinent to it requires utilizing principles of
science and engineering knowledge. Technology is more descriptive and empirical than
engineering.
In general, it is usually not enough to create a technically successful product, and it must
also meet further requirements. For example, it is essential to introduce a new product that
performs as well as expected, does not cause unintended harm to the public at large,
especially the environment, and also achieves sustainability.
Engineers take this responsibility to identify, understand and interpret the constraints on a
design in order to produce a successful result. They typically attempt to predict how well
their designs will perform to their specifications prior to full-scale production. In
developing technology, engineers carefully consider the constraints including available
resources, physical or technical limitations, flexibility for future modifications and some
other factors, such as cost, safety, marketability and serviceability.
Engineering is then defined as a creative application of scientific, economic, social and
practical principles to design, construct, operate, develop and maintain structures,
machines, devices, apparatus, systems, materials and/or manufacturing processes as
required for an intended function, economics of operation or safety to life and property.
With full cognizance of the object or process, engineers forecast the behavior of their
designed equipment and/or plants under specific operating conditions.
Engineering is the ability not only to create a technology but also to solve problems,
improve the process and construct the product by applying the engineering principles.
Engineering principles involve a systematic and often iterative approach to accomplishing
goals in order to meet human needs and/or society concerns. Engineers should know how to
define a solvable problem, to test the potential solutions and finally to reach an optimal
solution by making trade-offs among multiple concerns, such as functional, ethical,
economic, esthetic and social factors. Engineers apply mathematics, other sciences and
economics accompanied with their logic and tacit knowledge to design novel processes or
to find appropriate solutions to existing problems or to improve the status quo. This job is
basically performed by creating proper mathematical models (design equations) that allow
analyzing the system and/or its operation. Engineers respond to the interests and needs of
society and in turn affect society and the environment by bringing about technological
changes. Consequently, it is fair to note that engineers have an important role in the

coevolution process of society and technology. Engineering is more quantitative and less
empirical than technology.
The distinction between engineering and technology emanates primarily from differences in
their educational programs. Engineering curriculums are oriented toward development of
conceptual skills and include a sequence of fundamentals and courses built on a foundation
of complex mathematics as well as science courses. Technology programs are geared
toward applications and provide the students with only introductory mathematics and
science courses accompanied with a qualitative introduction to engineering fundamentals.
Relying on these differences, nowadays, engineering and technology programs are
evaluated and accredited using two separate sets of accreditation criteria. Throughout
history, technology has been created to satisfy human wishes and requirements. Much of
modern technology is a product of science and engineering, and existing technological tools
are used in both fields.
Technology education relies on study of the human-made world, including artifacts,
processes and their underlying principles and concepts, and the overall aim of technology
education is to provide students to participate effectively in technologically dependent
world. There are no constraints in developing and using technology. However, in
engineering design, a great attention is made on constraints including the laws of nature, or
science, time, money, available materials, ergonomics, environmental regulations,
manufacturability and reparability. In this regard, engineering utilizes concepts in science
and management as well as technological tools to accomplish their responsibilities.
Graduates from engineering programs are called engineers, while graduates of technology
programs are called technologists. Clearly, engineering graduates career differs from those
with technology background, technologist. Engineering graduates are with a breadth and
depth of knowledge that allows them to function as conceptual designers and operators in
product and process development. Once engineers enter the workforce, they typically spend
their time planning, while technologists spend their time making plans work.
Nowadays, the engineering disciplines are thought as the repositories of technological
knowledge and their practitioners as the primary agents of technological change in their
respective industries. The growth of useful technological knowledge is the product of what
goes on inside the engineering disciplines. To learn how technological learning
accumulates, it is necessary to look carefully at the engineering professions. For example,
in early days of chemical industries, technological knowledge simply was used in the
creation of a particular and singular product or process. However, with the development of
the concept of unit operations and its codification in textbooks of chemical engineering, a
given amount of inventive effort led to a larger spread out to future inventors. As a result,
chemical engineering was developed and replaced chemical technology. In other words,
chemical engineering came into existence in response to the emergence of new industries
and technologies.
Chemical engineering is a body of knowledge about the design of product, which their
production involves chemical transformations, as well as their process plants.

In technology, an object is produced to serve a function, and in general, goal or product is

not researched itself. According to the preliminary definition of technology as the effort to
avoid effort, the results or outcomes of the technology are not concerned. However, the
commercialization potential of any technological object, its further development and its
impact on the society and environment should be well researched and identified. The
importance of these considerations was strongly felt when World War II began.
After World War II, the empirical training of engineers proved inadequate to meet the
growing demands for new processes and hence chemical engineering education started to
change. Chemical engineering was becoming more focused on science and mathematics
than on engineering tradition. Aris and Amundson began emphasizing the importance of
mathematical modeling using dimensionless quantities in reactor design. Bird presented a
unified mathematical description of mass, momentum and energy transfer in their now
famous text, Transport Phenomena. Their work helps encourage greater mathematical
competence in chemical engineering education. Engineers are, nowadays, expected to be
experts in mathematics and relevant sciences for design, innovation and trouble shooting of
a system or process.
The engineering tasks are generally creative and iterative that requires multiplicity of
knowledge, which constitutes the essence of research, modeling, fabricating, testing and
communicating. Evidently, these are not concepts only associate with the mathematics and
sciences learned by an engineer at the university, and engineers must update their
knowledge and skills. Besides that, engineers mostly face a great challenge after
graduation, which is the expectations of industries, as they usually prefer to employ multidisciplinary and skilled engineers who able to work at different departments, such as
design, innovation, maintenance and marketing to provide both the plant and customer
satisfaction. Engineering research in industry and research institute consists of a wide
variety of activities ranging from study of material properties for possible future application
to the testing necessary to establish design parameters or to verify the adequacy of new
design concepts. Engineers are recommended to focus on not only a specific disciplinary
but also multi-disciplinary research. The research in engineering must use quantitative as
well as qualitative approaches. The impacts of technological innovation on society must be
assessed by considering evolving marketing, environmental, sustainability, legal and
commercial implications.
One of the most critical elements of the innovation process is the long-term research
required to transform new knowledge generated by fundamental scientific discoveries into
the novel new products, processes and services required by society. Consequently, in the
engineering carrier, research plays a major role and is the most critical step. Engineers
spend a lot of time researching about the product or process they are working on. They also
research to learn about the problem they need to resolve as well as to gain information
when they run into difficulties. Accordingly, they need to keep on learning new materials
throughout their career that means Life Long Learning (L3) is vital for engineers.
Technology and engineering possess two different stages of development, i.e., the route to
engineering started by science, followed by applied science, followed by technology and
then followed by engineering.
Therefore, we should be careful in using terms of engineering and technology.