Professor Claire Adjiman

IMSE Webinar Series

Greener Plastics Future and Sustainable Materials

The challenge that will be discussed in this session is:

Developing Better Manufacturing Processes Through Molecular Engineering

Join us for this informal webinar with Professor Claire Adjiman. There will be an opportunity for question and answer after the presentation. To join this webinar you must register in advance and you will be emailed the joining instructions for the webinar.

Abstract

The sustainability of manufacturing processes depends on a myriad decisions including the specific flowsheet / sequence of steps adopted, the specific equipment design and operating conditions. In processes that involve chemical transformations, the choice of processing materials such as catalysts and solvents also plays a critical role in all aspects of performance, from productivity to energy efficiency and health and environmental impact.

In this webinar, we explore how the choices of materials and molecules impact process performance. We discuss the need to go beyond the concept of “green” materials to achieve sustainable manufacturing processes. We highlight the need to integrate molecular and process design decisions, bringing molecular engineering and process engineering closer.

Achieving such an integration is a complex task; computer-aided design techniques and multiscale models have an important role to play in identifying promising designs amongst countless possibilities. We review the key challenges that must be overcome to enable such multiscale design and demonstrate what can be achieved through case studies, including the design of energy recovery systems and carbon capture processes and the optimisation of organic reactions.

Biography

Professor Claire Adjiman

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Co-Director of Institute for Molecular Science and Engineering

Claire Adjiman FREng FRSC FIChemE is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Adjiman received a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Imperial College London in 1993.She completed a PhD at Princeton University in 1998 and her thesis was titled ‘Global Optimization Techniques for Process Systems Engineering.’

In 1998 she joined the faculty at Imperial College London, where she was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering – Imperial Chemical Industries fellowship. She was appointed to Senior Lecturer in 2003 and Professor in 2011. She was a Visiting Professor at the Department of Chemistry at University of Warwick between 2007 and 2010. Her research focuses on integrating molecular level decisions into process design, property prediction and optimisation. Her group are developing computer-based process design techniques to improve the process economics as well as the material and energy efficiency. She is considered an expert in engineering molecular systems. Adjiman works with the oil and gas industry, solid oxide fuel cells and CO2 capture.

In 2012 she was awarded an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Leadership Fellowship.She is the Director of Centre for Process Systems Engineering at Imperial College London and is the Co-Director of the Institute of Molecular Science and Engineering at Imperial College London.

In 2015 she was elected to the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2016 she was elected to the Royal Society of Chemistry.

She is on the editorial board of the journals Molecular Systems Design & Engineering and Fluid Phase Equilibria. She is an Associate Editor for the journals Chemical Engineering Science and Journal of Global Optimization .

If you have any questions about accessibility requirements please email Leah Adamson (IMSE Events Officer) on l.adamson@imperial.ac.uk

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