Separations VI: New Perspectives on Very Large-Scale Operations

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AbstractProposal Title: Separations VI: New Perspectives on Very Large-scale OperationsProposal Number: CTS-0437322Principal Investigator: C. Judson KingInstitution: Engineering Conferences Internatinal of Polytechnic UniversityThis grant will provide support for the conference, Separations VI: New Perspectives on Very Large-Scale Operations, to be held in Australia in October 2004 under the aegis of Engineering Conferences International. It will focus on the development of new separation technologies able to address the demands of scale and reliability. Topics will include capture and sequestration of greenhouse gases, processing of natural gas found in deep and remote off-shore gas fields, conservation and recycle of urban water, low environmental footprint minerals processing, and a move to a hydrogen energy economy. The conference will provide a forum where academic, government, and corporate researchers from the US, Europe, Japan, China, Korea and Australia will meet under strongly interactive conditions to share experience and to plot future technological developments. Most of the funding will provide an opportunity for early career researchers and graduate students to interact with leaders in the field. Notably, the US and Australia have joint research activities in climate change research and Australia has demonstrated international leadership in urban water treatment and mineral processing. This, plus its closeness to Asia means that senior Asian separations researchers will be attracted to conference, thus providing US delegates with the opportunity to interact with a new group of active researchers. Japan, China and Korea each have strong research programs in membrane technology and nanostructured adsorbents and in the application of this science to processing situations. In terms of the broader impacts, the conference will provide an opportunity to reexamine world research on separations technology and to identify the fundamental work that needs to be done to address the new generation of problems. Although there are emergent technologies (novel high temperature membranes, nanostructured adsorbents, new chemical absorbents) being reported in the literature, translating these into large-scale technologies represents a major challenge, both in optimizing the science and translating it into feasible engineering solutions that address practical needs.