New processing meeting seeks sustainability

The organisers say that the meeting has been convened in recognition of the growing awareness by governments and (bio)chemical process industries that this lies at the heart of sustainable process technology, leading to improvements in process performance that are acceptable to society while enabling economic benefits.

This in turn is being driven and accelerated by technical innovation and legislation, in particular the European Council's Integrated Pollution Prevention Control (IPPC) Directive that demands owners and operators adopt "Best Available Techniques".

Sustainable Biochemical Process Technology​ will take place on 27-29 September 2005 and is being organised by BHR Group International. It will incorporate the organisation's 6th International Conference of Process Intensification.

In its new guise the conference aims to build on the success of its predecessors while developing the theme of sustainability and expanding its horizons to include areas such as green chemical technology.

The aim, according to BHR​, is to provide "a forum for today's practical solutions and potential ideas from across industry and academia that will become the Best Available Techniques of the future."​

The organisers are trying to compile a series of presentations based on case studies illustrating application of the technology and scientific papers describing application-orientated academic work. They are particularly interested in papers that bring together co-authors from different industries, industry sectors or from industry and academia.

It is anticipated that papers accepted for presentation will focus on topics that fall into one of four themes: Intensified Equipment and Processes​ such as miniaturisation, multifunctional, external force fields, plasma and microwaves; Engineering for Green Chemistry​ such as supercritical fluids, membranes, photocatalysis and energy sources; Integrated Design for Sustainable Processes​ such as economic operations, safety and controllability, environmental and batch to continuous processing; and the Intensified Laboratory​, covering issues such as scaledown of continuous processes, micro- and nanoreactors, engineering of high throughput screening, measurement of kinetics and thermodynamics.

The conference is aimed at chemical engineers, academics and other professionals involved with the design and implementation of chemical process plant in industries including: bulk chemicals; fine/specialty chemicals; pharmaceuticals; biotechnology; polymers/plastics; water treatment; minerals/metals; novel materials.

Delegates seeking an introductory overview will be offered a half-day course before the conference begins, and post-conference technical visits will provide practical examples of applications of the technology, according to BHR.

The event is cosponsored by Technical University Delft, DSM Research and Process Intensification Network NL (Senter Novem) of The Netherlands and The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of the UK.