Instrumention or process engineering?

Question

Hi,
I am a chemical engineer also having a two year diploma in mechanical engineering. At presently I am involved with the instrumention side of the mining industry. Its been about 13 months since Ive graduated with my bachelors in chem engg.

I was wondering if it was better to specialize in instrumention or would it be better to work into a conventional process position. I ask from the long term perspective of money, job satification and opportunities later on down the road perhaps in different industries like oil and gas.

I hear the process guys make well and so do instrumention and at this stage I am a big overwhelmed and confused into which direction I should mould my career into.

Thanks

Answer 1

Money wise between the two it will be about the same.

Process engineers get to developed the process, problem solving, defining the P&IDs, selection of major equipment and types (pumps, presses, tanks, etc). Most of the up front work on a project. They give the instrumentation people the information for them to select and size the instruments (flow meters, control valves etc)

The instrumentation engineers make sure everything works when it is supposed to, turns on and off when supposed too. Making sure all the loop diagrams are correct, all the switches, alarms, etc are included. PLC programming is involved.

From my experience, most chemical engineers by degree are process engineers and most instrumentation engineers have an electrical engineering degree.

Answer 2

For the career path you are describing, instrumentation engineering is almost a subset of process engineering. I would take more courses leaning toward process engineering: controls, some instrumentation, if offered, even some programming classes aimed at relay logic and PLCs.

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Answer 3

There are in basic terms 2 forms of engineers: undertaking manager or (2) undertaking fashion designer. you'll have a particular personality to paintings in structure and manage the folk in touch, so in case you want to manage human beings from the right, you'll first desire to hit upon procedures to manage them from the bottom. i might want to keep on with engineering structure administration and go away designing to the more youthful crowd.