Chemical Process Safety is the course that separates chemical engineering from every other discipline’s treatment of safety, because the hazards are not incidental to the process — they are the process, held under control. The statewide description covers laboratory and process safety and analysis with emphasis on prevention and mitigation, and experiment design, evaluation and presentation of results.
⚠⚠ Safety is not a compliance topic in this profession; it is the profession. Bhopal, Flixborough, Texas City and Piper Alpha are all chemical process failures, and each is taught here not as history but as an analysis a competent engineer could have done beforehand. ⚠ Employers ask about this course by name.
Carried by one Florida public institution.
Named on the Chemical Engineer career path. ⚠⚠ Process safety is a career in itself, and a well-paid one: process safety engineer, risk analyst, and the HAZOP-facilitation work that consultancies sell. In Florida it applies directly at the phosphate and fertiliser plants, pharmaceutical and biotechnology manufacturing, power generation, and anywhere ammonia refrigeration or chlorine is handled — water treatment included. Even for a graduate who never specialises, it is the course that makes you useful in your first week, because a new engineer who understands a relief valve is trusted with more.
| Programme | Process safety course |
|---|---|
| University of Florida | ECH4714 Chemical Process Safety |
| University of South Florida | ECH4715 Chemical Process Safety and Ethics — a corequisite of its design course |
| FAMU-FSU College of Engineering | ⚠⚠ neither — distributed through the design sequence |
⚠⚠ ABET requires the content either way, so this is not an accreditation gap. But a dedicated course covers relief sizing, HAZOP facilitation and quantitative risk assessment in a depth that a few weeks inside a design course cannot, and the transcript line is visible to an employer where distributed coverage is not. If your programme offers it as an elective, take it; if it does not, the AIChE and CCPS student resources and the CSB reports are the realistic substitute, and they are free.
UF is the only carrier, and the statewide description ends “integrated with ECH 4224L” — which is UF’s own laboratory number. So the state record was contributed by UF and is not independent corroboration of anything on this page.
⚠ And the contributor has since drifted from its own contribution. The statewide title is Safety & Experimental Evaluation-Upper, pairing safety with experimental design; UF now titles the course Chemical Process Safety, which reads as safety having grown into a course of its own. Treat the statewide record as the older description and the UF catalogue as the current one.
Chemical engineering is awarded by four Florida public institutions in three cities: the University of Florida (110 bachelor’s degrees a year), the University of South Florida (73), Florida State (27) and Florida A&M (4). Florida State and Florida A&M share the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, a single joint college in Tallahassee, which is why their records for this prefix are identical down to the title.
⚠⚠ So a carrier count in this prefix overstates how many independent programmes exist. A course carried by “FAMU and FSU” is one programme’s course, not two institutions agreeing. Read the hedging on this page accordingly, and treat anything stated about content as a description of a small number of specific curricula rather than a Florida-wide norm.
⚠ Neither UCF nor FIU awards a chemical engineering degree — the two largest universities in the state by enrolment. See the Chemical Engineer career path for what that means if you live in Orlando or Miami.
All four Florida programmes are accredited by ABET’s Engineering Accreditation Commission, which is what employers screen on and what carries the four-year route to Professional Engineer licensure under s. 471.013(1)(a), Florida Statutes. ⚠ Accreditation attaches to a named programme at a named institution, not to a course list — verify the specific programme in ABET’s own search.
Most chemical engineers never license: process plants fall under the industrial exemption. ⚠ The Florida exceptions are environmental and water engineering consulting, where work is sealed for public clients. Sit the FE examination in your final year regardless — the chemical FE is written for the curriculum you have just finished and will never be easier.
Generated September 18, 2026 · Updated September 18, 2026