Workshops

A unique feature of NASCRE 4 will be three workshops available for conference attendees for a nominal additional fee. These will be presented by scholars and experts in these areas and, in some cases, involve vendors who have developed software. The workshops will have a capacity limit and will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.

Two of the workshops are scheduled concurrently from 1:00 pm to 3:30 pm on Sunday, March 10. Note that for this time slot, you may enroll in only one workshop. The third workshop will be held from 4:00-5:30 pm on Sunday, March 10.

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Sunday, March 10, 1:00 – 3:30 pm: Two workshops available (pick one)

Laboratory Reactors

Instructors: Dan Hickman, Jeff Herron, and Joseph DeWilde
Engineering and Process Science
The Dow Chemical Company, Midland, MI 48674

Summary

Developed by the Core R&D Reaction Engineering group of The Dow Chemical Company and designed for chemists and engineers who operate or use data from laboratory reactors, this course contains fundamental reaction engineering knowledge essential for generating high quality data from a laboratory scale reactor. The course content includes general principles for designing and operating laboratory reactors. The bulk of the course content focuses on stirred tank and fixed bed reactors for a variety of reaction systems, including homogeneous liquid phase, gas-liquid, gas-solid, liquid-solid, and gas-liquid-solid systems. At the end of this course, chemists and engineers will have a better understanding of the critical factors affecting the performance of laboratory scale reactors and the appropriate means for addressing those factors to maximize the probability of success. This course will also introduce a new, publicly available tool for estimating gradients in heterogeneous catalyst particles and for sizing laboratory fixed bed reactors. This tool is the product of a collaboration between Dow and Purdue University.

Schedule

1. Introduction to fundamental concepts and principles
2. Stirred tank reactors
   1. For liquid and gas-liquid systems
   2. For gas-liquid-solid slurry systems
3. Fixed bed reactors
   1. For gas-solid systems
   2. For gas-liquid-solid systems
   3. Practical tips
   4. Example comparing alternative fixed bed approaches

Simulation of Catalytic Reactors

Instructors: Ravindra Aglave and Thomas Eppinger
Siemens

Packed bed reactors are widely used in the chemical and process industry amongst others for highly exothermic or endothermic catalytic surface reactions. Such reactors are characterized by a small tube to particle diameter ratio (D/d). To ensure safe thermal management, it is important to understand the flow and heat transfer behavior. Experimental methods allow this to some degree, but have restrictions in terms of the range of operating conditions as well as accuracy of measurements. Spatially resolved simulations of packed bed reactors are a method that has gained a lot of importance due to the insight they provide. The results from such simulations can then be utilized in larger scale system simulations of tube bundle reactors or modeling very large tubular reactors.

In this workshop, we will focus on the workflow and simulation methodology developed for spatially resolved packed bed reactor simulations, their comparison to experimental data as well as the method to use and integrate this information into process simulation tools.

Schedule

1. Introduction to the topic and instructors
2. Industry presentation: modeling and simulation of lab scale packed bed reactor
3. Siemens & PSE presentation: resolved packed bed simulation method and integration with process simulation in gPROMS
4. Demonstration using STAR-CCM+
5. Academic presentation: Implementing reaction models in packed bed reactors
6. Discussion and wrap up

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Sunday, March 10, 4:00 – 5:30 PM

Women in Engineering: Let's Break the Boundaries

Organizer: Subhashini Vashisth
Eastman Chemical Company

Please join us for NASCRE’s very first workshop focusing on Women in Engineering. All are welcome to attend this workshop as...

• We all value innovation, diversity and inclusion in the workplace
• We all believe in women gaining and exercising leadership in the workplace
• We are brave enough to discuss the under-representation of women in technology and engineering

Among practicing engineers, about 12 percent are women, a share that has also been consistent over the past two decades. What are the factors that influence women graduates’ decisions to enter the engineering workforce and to either stay in or leave the field as their careers progress? The panelists in the workshop would share their experiences and views about the obstacles and ways to ensure that this new world has a system in which women can fully participate. Engineering skills are very valuable and can contribute to a productive and fulfilling career even if one does not remain in technical work. But when women are lost disproportionately as technical creators, they do not participate in creating the world in which we will all live.

What might be done to motivate our technical community to create environments suitable for more than one dominant group? We believe that fully engaging and leveraging the talents of women engineers should be an integral part of our technical community’s strategy to out-innovate and out-educate. Clearly, a vibrant and innovative scientific community can thrive only when it draws from all segments of the technically skilled workforce.

It’s a big and complicated issue, and there’s much that goes into understanding what creates the problem and how it is maintained. Even if people understand the problem, they do not necessarily know what to do about it. This workshop emphasizes valuing diversity and recognizing what it really contributes.

Professional associations and societies of engineering have a pivotal role to play in the retention, engagement, and advancement of women engineers in technical careers. Women in leadership roles of professional societies of engineering not only advocate on behalf of all of its members, but more importantly, they carry with them the power to represent the voices of the women who are not at the table, and potentially changing the narrative to be more inclusive and equitable.

Building a community within our up-and-coming talented women engineers is very important and this workshop is an excellent way to bring this topic to the fore of our discussions and challenge the stereotype mindset.

Schedule

1. Introduction - Purpose, Process and Payoff (15 min)
2. Panel Discussion: Boundless Opportunities (30 min)
3. I Can’t but We Can - Group Activity (30 min)
4. Closing Remarks (15 min)