Today was an awesome day! We woke up early to take a 90 minute bus ride to have a site visit with Nouryon, a specialty chemicals company. As a chemical engineering major, I have been so excited for this visit, and it did not disappoint! We started off with a presentation learning about the business side of the company, and then got into more of the science and chemistry side with tours of the labs.

In the business presentation, we learned that Nouryon is a middle-sized chemical company, earning about 5.2 billion in revenue per year. This means that they have to compete with both smaller and larger chemical corporations. They do this by focusing on safety and sustainability of their products. Nouryon has chosen 10 of the United Nations sustainability goals to adhere to, which we learned about in our pre-departure classes. They also have goals to be a net-zero company by 2050, which reflects how The Netherlands government also helps push its businesses to meet these goals as a country. They told us how there was a mix of 19 corporate function employees on sight, 39 employees working in integrated supply chain, 65 in performance formulation, and 176 in research and development. This showed me a lot about how even though business and engineering might seem separate at university, they are deeply intertwined and as an engineer I will be working right alongside people in corporate, and this teamwork is what makes a successful business like Nouryon. I also learned that the role of a specialties company can help with sustainability by helping with innovation and developing products that are sustainable. For example, they can research compounds that will create packaging that is lighter and more durable, decreasing fossil fuel usage when goods are being transported. This idea can be applied to almost any part of life, because chemicals are used in nearly everything! The Netherlands site we visited was the biggest research and design hub Nouryon has, so I felt lucky that we got to see this side of it.

The most exciting part of this trip to me was the lab visits! We got to wear lab coats and goggles and learned a lot about safety; Nouryon is very proud of their safety practices. Since the company works with a lot of organic peroxides, which are very flammable, they also run many tests to evaluate the safety of the containers they are stored in. They said it was one of the only test sites of its kind in the world! They showed how the correct temperature and pressure for storing chemicals is determined and we even got to see some explosions in their controlled, concrete-walled testing rooms. Additionally, we learned about how Nouryon tests its own products in term of elemental and organic composition, and testing their compounds in other products other companies may make. Even though most of it was extremely advanced and high-tech, it was really cool to see parts of what I learned in school this year in chemistry and physics being applied in a real-life lab setting. Since Nouryon creates compounds that other companies buy, it was interesting to see how they did research on all kinds of products. One of the men leading a tour had been working for Nouryon for 38 years, and had worked on tires, take-home tests for pharmacies, laundry detergent, dish detergent, fire resistant materials, and more over the years. I liked this because it seems like changing up the types of work would make a research career much more fun and exciting.

After the site visit, we had an alumni event. I spent most of my time talking to Christina Pampena, who set up the visit with Nouryon and was a chemist who has worked her way up on the business side of the the company. I found out that she was in the same sorority as me, Alpha Delta Pi, at Pitt! She was so much fun to talk to and so inspiring to me as a girl who wants to go into chemical engineering. She gave me a lot of advice about working had and getting experience with internships. I also got to try bitterballen, which is a Dutch snack with fried stew, and it was really good. I wish I had more photos to include in this post, but Nouryon will be sending us some photos after reviewing them. Other than that, today was so much fun!!