Amidst the season of festive spirit, three good tidings emerged from the recently concluded Chemcon-2002 at Hyderabad. Firstly, we were adjudged as the Best Regional Centre, a distinction that has come our way for the second time in a row. Secondly, our Chairman Mr. D.P.Misra has been elected to the office of the National level Vice-President of IIChE. Thirdly, Mumbai Regional Centre has been selected to host Chemcon-2004.

Chemcons are always an exhilarating experience, as delegates breathe, drink and eat chemical engineering for 4 days. This year’s Chemcon at Hyderabad was no exception and served up an appetising fare for chemical engineers of all hues and shades. For those of you who have never attended a Chemcon before, let me assure you it is an experience worth every single Rupee of your registration fee.

Every Chemcon has a theme for its symposium, and this year’s theme was related to the Pharmaceutical Industry, a very apt one considering the emergence of Hyderabad as the bulk drug capital of the country. A detailed overview of Chemcon-2002 is presented inside this Newsletter.

Chemcons are getting bigger and more popular every year, with the ever-increasing number of plenary sessions and technical sessions. On day 2, there were as many as 16 plenary lectures lasting well over ten hours. It might be advisable to phase them out in future Chemcons in order to sustain the interest of delegates, and increase their level of interaction. On days 3 and 4, the technical sessions were packed with papers, sadly not all of them of a high standard. The presentation time of less than 10 minutes at the technical sessions was woefully inadequate, and has to be reviewed if the young researchers and students have to be given a fair opportunity to present their work. A more rigorous screening of papers submitted for the technical sessions and mixing them up with plenary sessions is called for to enhance the image of Chemcons.

Let me take the pleasure of wishing all fellow Chemical Engineers and their families a very Happy and Prosperous 2003.

You will be pleased to note that our Regional Centre has been adjudged as the Best Regional Centre during Chemcon 2002 at Hyderabad. Besides, the National Council has approved Mumbai Regional Centre’s bid to host the annual session in December 2004 for which I solicit the support of all our fellow members, in order to make it a grand success.

The New Year has brought some positive message for the industrial sector. The Central Statistics Organisation has informed that GDP growth has improved to 5.4 % instead of predicted 4 %. Not only that the manufacturing centres are doing well, but also the service sector has done better than expected. The New Year has commenced with launch of ethanol blended petrol. This would go a long way in improving the environment besides the health of sugar industry. The New Year has also brought the cellular operators together to bring down the cost of communication, mainly triggered by the entry of Reliance Infocom on 28^th December 2002. We hope the year 2003 brings cheers to Indian Chemical Industry.

Safety and Environment have been a major concern with the growth of the Chemical Industry. Indian Chemical Industry has taken considerable proactive measures with regard to Safety, Health and Environment. Our regional centre is organising a one-day seminar on Safety, Health and Environment in Indian Chemical Industry. I request the participation of our fellow members and the representatives of their organisation.

The Pharmaceutical Industry dominated the proceedings of CHEMCON 2002 held at Hyderabad from 19^th to 22^nd December. It was a most appropriate choice considering the emergence of Hyderabad as the Bulk Drug capital of the country.

The opportunities available to Indian Pharmaceutical Industry when several drugs go off patent in 2005 were stressed by many speakers. Up for grabs is business worth US $ 40 billion. If we are to make a success of this, a well-orchestrated effort by chemists and chemical engineers is required. Both chemists and chemical engineers have their own fortes. What chemical engineers bring to the table is a rigorous approach to problem solving and a penchant for assiduously carrying out complete material balances. Prof. M.M.Sharma, who was conferred with the lifetime achievement award, gave a powerful analogy of chemists and chemical engineers in a rowing race as opposed to the traditional relay race.

Among the several challenges presented before the Chemical Engineers by the Pharmaceutical Industry is the need for low-cost, high-efficiency separation technologies. Expectedly Membrane based separation techniques were at the forefront in the plenary lectures. Some of the current research work in this area pertain to using membranes as sorption devices for removing VOC and toxic heavy metals from effluents, as a cost effective alternative to adsorption on activated carbon. Molecular separation techniques like electrophoresis, chromatography and nanofiltration have been instrumental in the remarkable advances made in the areas of genomics and proteomics. Surface modification of membranes and improved hydrodynamics have significantly reduced fouling in bioprocessing applications. The challenge before chemical engineers in bioprocessing is the interesting problem of scaling down separation processes.

Prof. Govardhan Mehta and Dr.Rama Rao gave us a glimpse of the wondrous world of synthesisisng new molecules. The explosion of biological knowledge in the last two decades has been phenomenal, culminating in the complete mapping of the human genome. It opens up new potentials for synthesising New Chemical Entities (NCE). Transforming a NCE into a useful drug, let alone a blockbluster is another story altogether, fraught with threats from various fronts. It takes 12 drug candidates to yield one marketable product. Natural products provide some of the most promising leads and the synthetic chemistry has to be geared to fully leverage and exploit these leads. A strong IPR culture is imperative to succeed in the post WTO regime and Dr.Mashelkar’s path breaking work of compiling Traditional Knowledge Digital Libraries will go a long way in protecting our scientific heritage.

Green Chemistry involves alternative more environmental - friendly synthetic routes, and was another area at the forefront during the Congress. Prof. Sheldon of Delft University, who was the Chief Guest at the inauguration gave the mantra – ‘Think Green’. Prof. Sheldon introduced us to the E-factor, which is defined as the waste produced per tonne of product, a quantitative measure of the environmental – friendliness of a process. Traditionally chemical engineers have been more concerned about selectivity than conversion. Green technologies explore alternate reaction conditions, alternate (solvent free) media and even alternate energy sources. Dr. Raj Verma presented his work in which he has used an alternate energy source, not more than a kitchen microwave, to produce startling results.

Traditional Chemical Engineering areas were not totally submerged in the proceedings. CFD, the powerful numerical simulation technique, has made deep inroads in the design and analysis of chemical process equipment over the last 5 years. It is being used for an ever-increasing number of newer applications. Since many chemical processes involve chemical reactions coupled with mass and energy transfer between phases, the greatest benefits are expected to come from development of CFD models for multiphase turbulent reacting flow. And in keeping with this trend, the technical sessions saw a slew of CFD related papers. Reactive Distillation was another much talked about theme. Generally, mathematical modeling appeared more predominant than pure experimental work in the technical sessions.

K.Sahasranaman

Prof. Rodney Fox delivered a lecture on ‘Computational Fluid Dynamics in Reactor Design’ on 26^th December at UICT.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a powerful tool, which emerged in mid-nineties and is being increasingly used today by aerospace, chemical and mechanical engineers for rigorous treatment of fluid flow problems. Prof. Fox began his lecture by presenting the chemical engineering definition of CFD - ‘Any numerical solution for solving the microscopic or time-averaged momentum’.

CFD has numerous applications in the chemical industry. The current research emphasis is on model development for various applications. Unique chemical engineering skills are required to couple CFD with other models like population balance and fluid mixing for Chemical Reaction Engineering applications.

Prof. Fox presented three case studies to illustrate the areas of CFD applications for chemical reactor design:

1. Thermo-chlorination reactor for chloroform production.
2. Multiphase flow reactors involving crystallisation.
3. Gas-fluidised bed polymerisation reactor.

In each of these above cases the experimental values were compared with the values predicted by a CFD based model.

Prof. Joshi, Director UICT, in his summary reminded the gathering that chemical engineering is largely an empirical science. Even the simplest of chemical engineering problem, namely calculation of pressure drop in a pipeline, uses an empirical formula to calculate the pressure drop. The widespread use of CFD is likely to reduce the extent of empiricism from chemical engineering practice.

At the end of the lecture MRC felicitated two chemical engineers who have distinguished themselves in their respective areas. Mr.Mukesh Rohtagi has a long stint in the refining industry and has recently taken over as Director-Refinery of BPCL. Mr.Rameshchandra Kanhade has served Maharashtra State Government in various capacities and is currently leading a World Bank aided health project.

Afterwards members enjoyed a fellowship with dinner

This month’s website www.filtraguide.com , which calls itself ‘The Filtration and Separation Portal’ is a central source of information on all aspects of filtration and separation. It has a huge database which can be searched by company name or product/brand name. There is also a comprehensive glossary of filtration and separation terms. Another useful feature is the illustrated explanation of different filtration concepts and principles.

Send your feedback on this and the Newsletter in general to secretary@iichemrc.org. Of course do keep visiting www.iichemrc.org for the MRC news and www.iiche.org.in for the news from the IIChE Headquarters.

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