The Best Energy Carrier for Heavy Duty Transport
Hydrogen produced from solar energy is the best energy carrier for heavy duty transport This point was made by Adri Huesman, principal hydrogen technologist of Shell. Adri presented his story at the Process Systems Engineering NL Winter Symposium at Institute for...
The Use of Functional Process Steps
Functional process steps can be used for rapid investment cost for start-up time estimations. In this article I explain the use of functional process steps. What are functional process steps? Functional process steps are the steps that fulfill a single function in a...
Circular Plastic from Carbon Dioxide
Annelie Jongerius of Avantium, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, presented the formation of the polymer PoLyGlyoxylic Acid (PLGA) from carbon dioxide. The presentation was part of a Sustainable Process Intensification Network (SPIN-NL) and TNO mini-symposium on...
Economical Waste Polymer Recycling – highlights from CHISA 2024
The CHISA conference I visited this August contained many lectures and posters contributing to Sustainable Development Goals. Here are my two highlights concerning waste polymer recycling: Waste polyolefins, polyethylene, and polypropylene, used in textiles, can be...
An alternative teaching approach to Chemical Reaction Engineering
Chemical Reaction Engineering is a central course in any chemical engineering curriculum. It is however, considered by many students as a subject hard to master. A main obstacle for the students is the use of differential equations to describe phenomena about...
Product and Process Design – Second edition
'Product and Process Design: Driving Sustainable Innovation' has been renewed, the second edition is up for sale now (in paperback and digital form) at De Gruyter. Thise second edition contains examples and exercises, so that it can be used as a textbook in education....
Process intensification: The key to sustainability in chemical engineering
I have been discussing real-world applications of process intensification in the 4th installment of the 'Sustainability in Action' webinar series from Elsevier. A key takeaway: “Engineers play a key role in getting the sustainable development goals into actual...
New publication (Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology)
My article about Process Intensification has been published in Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology. You can read the entire article here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/0471238961.koe00067
From Batch to Flow Chemistry in Pharma is now Commercial Practice
I attended a mini conference called Advanced Flow Chemistry – Basis and Application, organised by Henk van den Berg, of SPIN_NL (Sustainable Process Intensification Netherlands), in Vugt, NL, 5th of March 2024. This mini symposium shows that continuous processing in...
Webinar Sustainable Innovation in Chemicals: Mastering Process Intensification
On March 13, I will be presenting a webinar on Sustainable Innovation in Chemicals: Mastering Process Intensfication. This webinar is the 4th in the series “Sustainability in Action: Real-world Examples for a Greener Future” from Elsevier Engineering. Sustainable...
Elon Musk’s Innovation Method and its Transfer to Process Industries
I am reading Elon Musk’s biography and found an interesting notion about his way of manufacturing space rockets. He puts the innovative engineers, who design the new rockets and the construction and testing employees all in the same building. When a problem appears in...
New 4 day online course: Process Scale-up
A new Process Scale-up course from Harmsen Consultancy will be given March 18-21, 2024. The 4 Day online “Advance Process Scale-Up” course focus is on the introduction and scale-up of new processes and new process equipment, including process intensified equipment,...
Interesting contact and information from ECCE 2023
Chemical Engineering for pharmaceutical process design and scale-up I attended the European (Bio)Chemical Engineering Congress (ECCE14, ECAB7) in Berlin 17-21 September 2023 and selected for the parallel sessions the topic ‘Chemical engineering for medicine’. This...
Distillation Scale-up course challenge
A client ordered a course session on distillation scale-up. I thought about this challenge and this triggered my memory on the subject. In the equipment engineering department of my previous employer 4-6 people developed distillation trays and packings for over 50...
Engineering for a better tomorrow
This was the title of the Dutch Process Technology Symposium at Twente University 6-7 July 2023. The whole symposium was about sustainability and circularity in a very lively atmosphere. The context: a cinema, with wide corridors and many round tables, facilitated...