Emerging Issues in National Energy and Environmental Security: Research Opportunities and Challenges for Chemical Engineers

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0955812MathurThe award is a group travel project for U.S. participants to attend a four day Workshop on Emerging Issues in National Energy and Environmental Security: Research Opportunities and Challenges for Chemical Engineers. The location would be: Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India on January 4-6, 2010.A workshop is planned between the US and Indian chemical engineering faculty members is proposed on the overarching topics of fundamentals of transport, environment, and energy processes as related to science, technology and sustainability. The phenomena of interfacial processes, thermodynamics, mass transfer, separations, catalysis, combustion, and particle mechanics, energy and environmental sustainability are the main focus of the workshop approaches. The US co-PI will be Dr Daniela Mainardi, of Louisiana Technical University. The Indian coordinator will be Dr S. Basu, Professor, IIT, New Delhi. The proposal also includes post workshop follow-up visits by a few specially selected US participants to visit the research laboratories of the Indian faculty to establish in depth scientific interaction. The main objective of this workshop is to have an exchange of scientific information and a dialogue between the American and Indian university faculty members on recent advances mainly in the above mentioned areas of fundamental research. It is planned and hoped that this contact will lead to bi-national research collaborations. Another goal is also to inculcate a close long-term collaboration between the faculty members particularly junior and minority faculty of these two countries for a sustained interaction and relationship. This effort of exploring fundamental new concepts that might lead to long-term solutions to the global energy and pollution challenges is to continue even after the workshop is over. This joint workshop will provide a platform to achieve these objectives of information exchange and faculty research collaboration that may also have a focus on these critical problems across the world. Intellectual Merit: The workshop would cover a variety of topics relevant to fundamentals of transport, environment, and energy processes. These include interfacial processes, thermodynamics, mass transfer, separations, catalysis, combustion and particle mechanics, energy and environmental sustainability. U.S. researchers in these areas will be invited who will match the interests of Indian researchers. Broader Impact: The major impact of this workshop would be to sustain our endeavor towards collaborative R&D effort between faculty members of the USA and India to undertake fundamental research towards energy production and achieving pollution prevention and control in industries involved in energy conversion and chemical production. For example, new joint discoveries in the field of carbon dioxide sequestration and fuel cells for vehicular transportation could limit global warming faced by both nations as well as the entire World. Participation of young and under represented faculty will be especially encouraged.