EDITORIAL pubs.acs.org/EF
Chemeca 2010
E
very year, chemical engineers from Australia, New Zealand, and increasingly beyond come together at the Annual Australasian Chemical Engineering Conference, which has long been known as Chemeca. In the 40th of these gatherings, around 550 delegates from academia, government, and industry came together in late September in Adelaide, Australia. The contributions spanned chemical engineering as broadly defined in the 21st century. Not unsurprisingly given the vast quantities of coal and natural gas in Australia along with the emerging renewable sector worldwide, there was a good number of contributions in the energy and fuels area. Drawing on the referees’ assessments of the conference papers (each was subject to double refereeing), a number of contributors were invited post-conference to submit a fuller manuscript to Energy & Fuels. Following a rigorous refereeing process supervised by the editors of Energy & Fuels, four papers were selected for publication in the Chemeca 2010 special section presented here. In the first of these contributions, a team based at the New South Wales (NSW)-Government-funded Wollongbar Primary Industries Institute demonstrates that pretreatment of Australiangrown postharvest sorghum and wheat straw with a dilute alkali (NaOH) brings substantial improvement in subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis, a process that yields simple sugars that are used to make biofuel. This has important implications for the conversion of what is a vast resource in Australia into biofuels without affecting the food supply. The second of the four contributions sees a multi-national team from the University of Nottingham (U.K.), Chubu University (Japan), Monash University, and Curtin University (both in Australia) come together to determine if the fate of inorganic species in coal pyrolysis and combustion is any different for asreceived and dried Victorian brown coal. While some differences were observed, they were not vast. This finding means results derived in the past using dry coal may be used with some confidence to understand the behavior of the coal in practice. The third contribution, which comes from a team in chemical engineering at The University of Adelaide, reports an investigation into the mechanisms of agglomeration and defluidization and their impact on fluidized-bed gasification for a high-sodium, high-sulfur lignite typical of coals found in South Australia. This work shows that stable fluidized-bed gasification is governed by a “high-temperature defludization limit” that suggests that defludization may potentially be avoided or delayed by operating the fluidized bed at high superficial velocities and/or lower temperatures. This finding may help to facilitate the exploitation of what are considerable but relatively under-used coal resources. A team involving researchers from Peking University and mechanical engineering at The University of Adelaide are the final contributors to this special section. Using both advanced simulations and experiment, these researchers determine the operating limits of a single-jet moderate or intense low-oxygen dilution (MILD) combustor that yields very low emissions without compromising thermal efficiency. They found that premixing of the reactants in a MILD combustor can provide a new avenue for stable operation and is a convenient approach for r 2011 American Chemical Society
retrofitting existing combustors operating in a conventional nonpremixed mode. In conclusion, we commend these four contributions as examples of the excellent work that is typically presented at the Annual Australasian Chemical Engineering Conference or Chemeca. Mark J. Biggs Chairman of Chemeca 2010 and Guest Editor P. J. Ashman Guest Editor Z. T. Alwahabi Guest Editor
Special Issue: Chemeca 2010 Published: June 01, 2011 2753
dx.doi.org/10.1021/ef200797u | Energy Fuels 2011, 25, 2753–2753
