Winner: 2024 RSC Apprentice Prizes
Harriet Bean
BASF
For major contributions towards the future sustainability of production plants through improvements to process safety, asset effectiveness, throughput, quality and raising apprenticeship awareness.
Harriet Bean works in polymer chemistry at BASF’s production site in Bradford. The company manufactures over 40 products used in applications such as automotive paints, cosmetic thickeners, ink dispersants and UV adsorbers. Harriet’s role is to improve pre-existing processes by reducing how long a batch takes to make, removing hazardous raw materials or altering one of the polymer’s characteristics. She also works on implementing new products to ensure the sustainability of the company’s workplace. For a chemical company, that means reducing hazards, waste and environmental impact, and that's what Harriet does on a laboratory scale before progressing and supervising trials on the production plant.
Biography
Harriet Bean is Process Chemist and Quality Coordinator at BASF in Bradford. Her chemistry career started in 2018 at age 16 when she joined the company as a laboratory technician apprentice. She was fortunate enough to progress to a Degree Apprenticeship in Chemical Science with Manchester Metropolitan University, which she completes in summer 2024. At 16, Harriet left the classroom and entered the chemical industry. Her day-to-day life for the last five years has been varied but usually consists of making laboratory-scale polymer products for BASF’s production plant or improving existing products to meet customers’ and the team’s requirements. BASF’s company slogan is ‘We Create Chemistry for a Sustainable Future’, and this has always resonated with Harriet. Before joining the company, she was part of an engineering club where she built a soapbox from a mobility scooter and was able to develop a renewable distillation set-up to produce antimicrobial Marigold oil for third-world countries. Now, at 21 years old, Harriet is able to take that passion and implement it on a much greater scale; many of her projects include removing harmful additives, introducing environmentally friendly alternative products and reducing the amount of waste produced by BASF’s production plant. For example, she is currently involved in a project to reduce the number of packages the company uses by accounting for the densities of the products: the heavier a product is, the more of it can be loaded into a container, and fewer packages are needed.
Q&A with Harriet Bean
How did you first become interested in chemistry?
I have a sister, Emily, who had a passion for forensic science when she was my age – there are seven years between us, so I was around 13 years old – and I would constantly ask her questions about the field and be curious about what she actually did during the eight-hour lab days. She also got me into the TV show NCIS, and I took a big liking to the forensic scientist in the show. From forensic science, you're probably wondering how I ended up in polymer chemistry. It wasn't the forensics part that caught my attention; it was the research and problem-solving in the laboratories. When I was 14, I joined an engineering club at my secondary school but quickly turned it more into a chemistry club; my friends and I worked together to build a distillation set-up out of recycled household items and used this set-up to obtain antimicrobial oil from marigold petals. Our ultimate aim was to make the instructions accessible to third-world countries that struggle to gain medical attention when necessary. So overall, chemistry has always been present in my life (I didn't even mention my Grandad, who was an RAF biochemist!).
Tell us about somebody who has inspired or mentored you in your career.
To answer this question I can't just name one person, but I have to name three – my mum, dad and sister. It's a cliché to use my family as my inspiration, but it is very much the truth. Although my mum has little insight when it comes to the chemical world, she was my emotional support system – it's often easy to forget that people have lives outside the workplace, and my mum was always the person who drew me back into the outside world, ensuring I had the work-life balance a lot of us struggle to uphold. My dad is quite the opposite; he is the most logical thinker I know, so any workplace advice I needed came from him. He is an engineer by trade, so we had similar workplaces. I remember at 16, he told me to ask lots of questions and always listen to people who are trying to help and support you. The world of chemistry is full of questions, and in my role, there are a lot of unknowns to solve, so I use that advice every single day. And finally, my sister, with a seven-year age gap, she acts as my life guru; all the trials and tribulations of working in a big team and learning new skillsets she's already done – as science goes, she's a mix of my mum and dad, a logical thinker that can incorporate how I feel into a solution. Without the three of them, I wouldn't have strived to be where I am/where I plan to go.
What advice would you give to a young person considering a career in chemistry?
When I was in secondary school, the only female scientist on the curriculum was Marie Curie, so when I was a young person I had very few famous role models. Once I started my career, I started attending various outreach conferences and events to spread the word about apprenticeships and roles within the chemical sector; they are great opportunities for schools and young people to learn from experienced professionals and ask any questions they have. Partaking in science competitions and attending chemistry conferences (at the appropriate level, of course!) will help determine the right career path and also allow networks to be made with potential future employers.
Can you tell us about a scientific development on the horizon that you are excited about?
Part of my role is to develop and implement new products at our production plant. Previously, new product set-ups would have been led by my manager and I would be responsible for particular tasks. In 2024, I have been given the project to lead a new product set-up; this will be my first experience leading a large project. The product consists of new raw materials and new processes to be used at our plant; it will be my responsibility to ensure everything is in place before manufacture and ensure the process is safe. I look forward to expanding my leadership skills and learning additional tasks, such as software development and calculating safety figures.
Why do you think collaboration and teamwork are important in science?
My workplace consists of around 40 people – the production plant runs 365 days, 24 hours a day. Teamwork is our biggest asset. Without teamwork and collaboration, you don't achieve progress and sustainability. If people aren't comfortable or willing to share ideas and highlight issues, problems will continue until a large failure occurs. For example, it was highlighted by one of our production operators that the solids content test on our products takes a long time and prevents the product from being packed off. As a result, my department invested in a laboratory microwave and developed methods for various products. Subsequently, the solids content test was reduced from one hour to five minutes, saving 55 minutes per batch; annually, this saved us a lot of time and allowed for a lot more product to be made. This was an issue we would not have been aware of if not for collaboration and teamwork across teams.