ChE department, PMC research center well-represented at AIChE conference

Faculty and graduate students in the department of chemical engineering played active roles at the annual meeting last month of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in San Francisco.

Mohamed El-Aasser, dean of the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science and professor of chemical engineering, co-organized the annual meeting of engineering deans who come from chemical engineering backgrounds. The meeting included presentations from the National Science Foundation and a discussion about bioengineering programs and their relationship to a chemical engineering education.

Anthony McHugh, P.C. Rossin Professor and chair of chemical engineering, presented a paper on "Modeling of Dry Spinning of Polymer Fibers" at a session on polymer processing and rheology.

McHugh and Israel Wachs, the G. Whitney Snyder Professor of chemical engineering, took part in Frontiers in Chemical Engineering Education, a workshop sponsored by NSF, the Council for Chemical Research and the National Research Council, which discussed the revamping of chemical engineering curricula and their integration under core organizing principles of molecular transformations, multi-scale analyses, and systems analysis and synthesis. McHugh attended a workshop on this project last summer at Cape Cod.

McHugh also hosted a Lehigh reception in honor of Wachs and Bill Luyben, professor of chemical engineering, who received AIChE awards in catalysis and reaction engineering (Wachs) and computing practice (Luyben).

James T. Hsu, professor of chemical engineering, and his research group presented four papers. "Fluid Mechanic Study of Perfusive Bed and Perfusive Particle Permeability" and "Modeling of Mass Transfer in Perfusive Particles:  Particle Scale" were co-authored by Hsu and Bader Al-Busairi, a Ph.D. candidate in chemical engineering.

"Perforated Monolayers for Gas Separations" was co-authored by Hsu; Steven L. Regen, professor of chemistry at Lehigh; and Xun Yan, Ph.D. candidate in chemical engineering. "Transition Between Supercoiled and Relaxed Circular Plasmid DNA during Alcohol Precipitation" was co-authored by Hsu and Panarat Tomanee, Ph.D. candidate in chemical engineering.

Mayuresh Kothare, P.C. Rossin Associate Professor of chemical engineering and co-director of the Chemical Process Modeling and Control Research Center (PMC), chaired a session titled "Control of Hybrid Systems."

Luyben, co-director of the PMC, received the Computing Practice award from AIChE's CAST division.

Kothare and his students presented six papers at the conference. "Integrated microchemical systems for fuel processing in micro fuel cell applications" and "Miniature Fuel Processors and Fuel Cells for Portable Power: Industry Trends and Potential Applications" were co-authored by Kothare and Ashish Pattekar, Ph.D. candidate in chemical engineering.

"Modeling and Simulation of Membrane Microseparators" and "Membrane Microreactors: Modeling, Design and Operability" were co-authored by Kothare and Khaled Alfadhel, Ph.D. candidate in chemical engineering.

"Proper Orthogonal Decomposition Based Control of Fluid Flow in Microchemical Systems" was co-authored by Kothare and Leonidas Bleris, Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering. "Dynamics and Control of Cyclic Operations in Pressure Swing Adsorption" was co-authored by Kothare and Zhaoyang Wan; Ph.D. candidate in chemical engineering, and also by L. Jiang, V. de la Torre, L. T. Biegler, J. A. Mandler, B. E. Herb, V. G. Fox and M. M. Daichendt.

Luyben and his students presented three papers. "Simulation and Control of Steam Generator Plant" was written by Luyben. "Dynamic Comparison of Alternative Tubular Reactor Systems" was co-authored by Luyben and Phisit Jaisathaporn, Ph.D. candidate in chemical engineering. "Dynamic disadvantages of intensification in inherently safer design" was co-authored by Luyben and D. C. Hendershot.

Wachs and his group earned 2nd place in the national EPA Green Engineering Award student competition with a poster titled "Selective Oxidation of Methanol to Dimethoxy Methane." Work on the poster, funded at Lehigh by the Lehigh-NSF REU (research experience for undergraduates) program, represented the first collaboration between the chemical engineering departments of Lehigh and Lafayette College. Other members of Wachs's group were Katie Barillas and Joel Gross of Lafayette, undergraduate students at Lafayette, and Javad Tavakoli, chair of Lafayette's ChE department. Barillas presented the poster.

Wachs also gave the 2003 Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division Award Lecture on "Applications of Fundamental Molecular Engineering Concepts to Catalysis and Reaction Engineering of Commercial Catalytic Processes." He chaired a session on "Fundamentals of Oxide Catalysts," and, with Andrew G. Gibson '52, gave a paper titled "Converting Gas Well Waste Gases to Value-Added Products" in a session on "Environmental Catalysis."