Teaching chemical product design

Chemical products depend for their function on a chemical or a chemical transformation and are usually of high value and manufactured in low volumes, relative to commodity chemicals. In recent decades chemical products have started to play a much more prominent role in the chemical industry. Our teaching, however, remains concentrated on the commodity sector. We argue that university curricula need to be adapted to take account of changes in industry. We propose, in particular, that design teaching should take more account of the different requirements for designing chemical products. We propose a four step procedure as a template around which to organise ideas for designing chemical products.