Program Overview

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BEng (Hons) Chemical Engineering with Foundation Year

Overview

Chemical Engineering at the University of Wolverhampton is industry-focused and aims to prepare students to tackle the challenges facing the chemical and allied industries in the 21st century.

Award

BEng (Hons)

Start Date

15 September 2025

UCAS Code

H811

Course Specifications

View course spec

Course Length

Full-time (4 years), Part-time (8 years)

Campus Location

University: City Campus

School

School of Engineering

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Course Details

Overview

Chemical Engineering at the University of Wolverhampton

Chemical Engineering at the University of Wolverhampton is industry-focused and aims to prepare students to tackle the challenges facing the chemical and allied industries in the 21st century. The central theme of the course is to make you an engineer.

Modern society relies on the work of chemical engineers. They help to manage resources, protect the environment and maintain stringent health and safety procedures, whilst all the while developing the processes that make the products we desire or depend on. The University of Wolverhampton’s Chemical Engineering course provides a deep understanding of chemical processes and the end products from industrial chemical reactions.

On the course, you will learn how raw materials can be transformed into useful products in a safe and cost-effective way. For example, petrol, plastics and synthetic fibres such as polyester and nylon all come from oil. Chemical engineers understand how to alter the chemical, biochemical or physical state of a substance, to create a range of products as diverse as food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

The course covers energy resource exploitation and management, industrial practices and processes, chemical thermodynamics and reaction engineering, process design and control, health and safety, protection of the environment, and petroleum and chemical refining. Our course is aimed squarely at producing engineers. We will ensure you have the correct balance of underpinning science, mathematical skill, and core chemical engineering to ensure that you will have second-to-none employment qualities and expectation.

We are proud to say we are accredited by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE).

What's Unique About This Course?

• Accredited by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE)
• Access to small and large scale pilot plants
• Access to design workspace & industrial standard process simulation
• Taught in our state-of-the-art City Campus

What Happens on the Course?

Alongside IChemE and in consultation with some of the UK’s leading Universities and global companies, we have designed a 21st century curriculum for 21st century students to produce 21st century engineers.

The teaching schedule is broadly split into three parts. We will provide the underpinning science and mathematics, giving you an introduction to what chemical engineering really is and the global impact it can have. We’ll then give you a deep understanding of how chemical engineers solve problems and the vital knowledge required to make products and process raw material efficiently and cleanly. We’re then going to challenge you to design your own processes and methods of manufacture, helping you discover how the physical world works and ultimately what sort of engineer you want to be and how you’ll get there.

Potential Career Paths

• Colour Technologist
• Food Manufacture and Processing
• Water and Waste Treatment Specialist
• Petroleum Processing Specialist
• Nuclear Engineer
• Academic
• Biotechnologist
• Consultant for Chemical and Allied Industries

Additional Information

Everything you need to know about this course!

Why Wolverhampton?

Under the direction of the IChemE, The University of Wolverhampton established a new Chemical Engineering degree programme in 2015. The new course is set within the base of subjects at the Wolverhampton’s City and Telford Campuses, and offers exceptional resources and support for would-be chemical, petroleum, and process engineers. We have set our sights on being one of the premier courses for Chemical Engineering in the Midlands and the UK as a whole. Our students already appreciate our engineering focus and understand where their underpinning chemistry and physics end the challenges of manufacturing engineering and global scale production begin; they also have been introduced to where their degree studies might take them.

Our history may be short, but it is glorious. We were established as one of only a handful of new courses in the whole of the UK. This was a real success for Wolverhampton and helps form a real powerhouse of chemical engineering education in the West Midlands. The new department is embedded within the , which in recent years received an injection of over £10m for new facilities and laboratories. However, Chemical Engineering also sits alongside other new courses in chemistry and physics and has strong teaching and research links with the mathematics department. These strongly allied subjects now deliver a coordinated scheme of physical sciences education to the region and the country. To help the delivery of our STEM courses we have just completed new Chemical Engineering Design Centre, along with a brand-new specialist laboratory just for chemical engineering. The design centre offers chemical and petroleum engineering students a dedicated space with industry standard software, technology, and support. In addition to the facilities in chemical engineering, and our site in Telford, our students are also taught in the new £25m Rosalind Franklin building which is a regional centre of excellence in science teaching and research.

The aim is for our graduates to be ready for employment. To help achieve this goal we provide additional opportunities for students to gain employability skills, with employability workshops and awards as part of the course. In addition, we are constantly building and maintaining links with regional, national, and international employers and regularly have speakers from prominent industries and other academic partners. Indeed, several highly experienced industrial experts hold honorary and visiting positions with us, and regularly share their experience and knowledge with our students.

The University of Wolverhampton offers a vibrant, up-to-date learning environment where the University and our dedicated and enthusiastic staff want to see our students succeed. This, along with the latest polls of salary scales for petroleum and chemical engineering, makes Wolverhampton the place to be.

We believe in supporting our students while they learn. This means we offer:

• All core textbooks for first and second year are available electronically and in the university learning centres
• Software licences for industry standard software are available across the campus
• All Personal Protective Equipment equipment provided free of charge
• Free UK field trips
• For every student, up to four years of student membership/associate entry for the IChemE is paid for by the department

Course Fees and Finance

Location | Mode | Fee | Year
---|---|---|---
Home | Full-time | £9250 per year |
Home | Full-time | £9535 per year |
Home | Part-time | £4625 per year# |
International | Full-time | £14950 per year |
International | Full-time | £15995 per year |

Entry Requirements

Prepare for Foundation Pathway:- We will consider applicants who have not achieved 48 UCAS points (equivalence) from prior level 3 qualifications, if you have a keen interest in this subject area or hold relevant experience. You will be required to attend and pass a compulsory Prepare For Foundation assessment day where you will take part in a variety of activities which will assess your suitability for the course. If you would like more advise and guidance about this admissions pathway, please contact the Gateway team to discuss and support you in making an application to us.

Who Accredits This Course?

Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE)

Accredited by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) on behalf of the Engineering Council for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as an Incorporated Engineer and partially meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered Engineer.

Funding

Tuition Fees Loan(Home Fee Status):

Most students will be able to apply for a loans to pay for these subject to eligibility. To find out more information please refer to the government Student Finance website.

Changes for EU students:

The UK government has confirmed that EU students starting courses from 1 August 2021 will normally be classified as having Overseas Fee status. More information about the change is available at UKCISA:

EU citizens living in the UK with 'settled' status, and Irish nationals living in the UK or Ireland, will still be classified as Home students, providing they meet the usual residency requirements, for more information about EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS)

Self-funding:

If you don’t want to take out a loan to pay your fees or if you aren’t eligible to receive a loan, you might want to take advantage of the University’s scheme to pay by instalments: See How to pay.

For more information please contact the Gateway.

Your employer, embassy or organisation can pay for your Tuition fees:

If your employer, embassy or organisation agrees to pay all or part of your tuition fees; the University will refer to them as your sponsor and will invoice them for the appropriate amount.

We must receive notification of sponsorship in writing as soon as possible, and before enrolment, confirming that the sponsor will pay your tuition fees.

Financial Hardship:

Students can apply to the Dennis Turner Opportunity Fund.

for help with course related costs however this cannot be used for fees or to cover general living costs.

Bursaries and Scholarships:

In addition the University also offers a range of Bursaries and Scholarships packages

You can find more information on the University’s Funding, cost, fee and support pages.

How We Compare

Find out how our course is rated on Discover Uni, the official website for comparing UK higher education courses

Full-time Course

77%say staff value students views and opinions about the course

Data for courses in Chemical, process and energy engineering over two years at University of Wolverhampton

85%of students say teaching staff have supported their learning well.

Data for courses in Chemical, process and energy engineering over two years at University of Wolverhampton

90%in work or doing further study 15 months after the course.

Data for courses in Chemical, process and energy engineering over two years at University of Wolverhampton

For more official course information visit Discover Uni

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Part-time Course

90%in work or doing further study 15 months after the course.

Data for courses in Engineering over two years at University of Wolverhampton

For more official course information visit Discover Uni

See course data

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