Analytical Chemists Focus on Process Control

Abstract

Process analytical chemistry. It's not a term most academic scientists are familiar with. However, a group of chemists and engineers at the University of Washington, Seattle, are working to change that. Those scientists believe that developing the ability to monitor industrial processes on-line is one of the major current challenges in analytical chemistry. That stance is not all that surprising because the scientists are affiliated with the university's Center for Process Chemistry (CPAC). One of the National Science Foundation's industry-university cooperative research centers, CPAC was set up in mid-1984 by two Washington chemistry professors, Bruce R. Kowalski and James B. Callis, who are codirectors of the center. Analytical chemistry missed the boat some years ago when chemists decided that, given the choice, analyses would be done in a laboratory, Kowalski says. If we had decided that analytical chemistry should be done at the site where the information is used, we would be in a ...