Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2000, 39, 1527-1528
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Preface It has been a great privilege to organize this special issue in honor of Professor J. D. (Bob) Seader. The papers included herein were contributed by some of Bob’s friends and colleagues to recognize his untiring efforts as Associate Editor of Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. and for his contributions, over a period of 50 years, to many different aspects of chemical engineering. First and foremost, I express my sincere appreciation to Bob for all that he has done to help make Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. what it has become. In 1986, I was asked to become Editor of this new monthly version that combined the three former Ind. Eng. Chem. quarterlies. One of the first tasks was to assemble an editorial team with a sense of quality and fairness for judging manuscripts over the broad scope of this new journal format. Early in this process, I consulted with my colleague, Professor James Fair, about who should handle papers in the general area previously published in the former quarterly Ind. Eng. Chem., Proc. Des. Dev. He quickly advised me that Bob Seader would be the ideal person; at that time Bob Seader was little more than a name to
me, although both of us had obtained Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin. I reviewed Bob’s long list of publications and was struck by the fact that his first paper, Ozone by Electrolysis of Sulfuric Acid with the late Professor Charles W. Tobias of the University of California at Berkeley, appeared in Ind. and Eng. Chem. in 1952. Because of this and my respect for Jim’s advice, I called Bob to probe his interest. He was quite reticent at first but eventually warmed to the idea and subsequently accepted the post as Associate Editor, which he held through mid-1999. During these 13 years, Bob became a close friend and advisor who was very helpful in setting a standard and direction for the journal. He was always very enthusiastic and full of innovative ideas. It is useful and interesting to review the experiences throughout a remarkable career that prepared Bob to be an ideal member of our editorial team. Following a brief stint in the U.S. Navy near the end of World War II, Bob received a B.S. (1949) and an M.S. (1950) in Chemical Engineering from the University of
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California at Berkeley. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1952, where he was one of 15 graduate students working under the late Professor W. Robert Marshall, Jr. He spent the first 13 years of his career with two companies in different industries, before moving to academia in 1965. While in these widely different employment environments, Bob made substantial contributions to the profession as a researcher, practitioner, teacher, author, and leader. Some highlights of his career are summarized below. During a productive 7 years (1952-1959) at Chevron Research Corp., Richmond, CA, he initially designed five processes that were constructed and operated. Then he codeveloped the Chao-Seader vapor-liquid equilibrium correlation, the first widely used correlation of its kind in computer-aided simulation calculations. He also developed two of the first computer programs for multicomponent distillation calculations and supervised the development of the first equation-based computer-aided simulation program. This stimulated an early interest in the power of computers for the design of chemical processes. He spent the following 6 years (1959-1965) at the Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation, Canoga Park, CA. Here, he conducted and supervised heattransfer research on all of the rocket engines that eventually took man to the moon. He was a codeveloper of a thermal ablation computer program that was one of the first of its kind to utilize finite elements. He received a NASA citation for heat-transfer research on liquid hydrogen at turbulent flow conditions in the highly cryogenic critical region. His last assignment at Rocketdyne involved the design of the shuttle engine. With this industrial background, Bob moved to the University of Idaho in 1965 and then to the University of Utah in 1966, where he has had a profound impact on the chemical engineering literature and education. His research has encompassed a broad array of topics, including flammability of materials and smoke generation, which involved the development of a method for computing light obscuration due to smoke development that has been used to predict the effects of nuclear winter. He has published a number of papers on heat transfer to particle-gas flow, restrictive diffusion in catalyst particles, and production of crude oil from tar sands. He is codeveloper of a patented energy-efficient method for recovering liquid fuel from tar sands using heat pipes. Bob was one of the early pioneers in the area of synthesis of separation sequences. He is codiscoverer of multiple solutions for interlinked distillation systems and has developed robust methods for finding all roots to systems of nonlinear equations using homotopycontinuation methods. The latter work received an award from the journal Comput. Chem. Eng. He is also codeveloper of a method for determining the second-law efficiency of any chemical process. In addition to research, Bob has been a dedicated teacher. For many years he has taught the senior design course in chemical engineering, and his students regularly compete in the National Student Design Problem Competition sponsored by AIChE. As evidence of his skill to inspire students to excel, his students have regularly won national recognition for their performance. Bob is highly regarded by the students he has taught and has been recognized for his contribution to
their education by receiving numerous teaching awards at the University of Utah. Bob has been a prolific author of textbooks in the important areas of separation processes and computeraided design in chemical engineering. A visit to amazon.com will reveal the following titles: 1. Henley, E. J.; Seader, J. D. Equilibrium-Stage Separation Operations in Chemical Engineering; John Wiley and Sons: New York, 1981. 2. Seader, J. D. Thermodynamic Efficiency of Chemical Processes; The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 1982. 3. Seader, J. D. Computer Modeling of Chemical Processes; AIChE Monograph Series 15; AIChE: New York, 1985. 4. Seader, J. D.; Henley, E. J. Separation Process Principles; John Wiley and Sons: New York, 1998. 5. Seader, W. D.; Seader, J. D.; Levin, D. R. Process Design Principles: Synthesis, Analysis and Evaluation; John Wiley and Sons: New York, 1999. Some have been widely used by departments of chemical engineering as undergraduate textbooks and by practicing engineers worldwide. The recent textbook Separation Process Principles incorporates the most modern techniques used in the design of separation processes and equipment and is receiving wide acceptance. Bob has written the section on distillation for the last two editions of Perry’s Chemical Engineers’ Handbook. Bob has been a strong advocate of the use of computers in the teaching of chemical engineering design. In fact, he was the first chemical engineering professor in the United States, to my knowledge, to introduce into the curriculum a computer-aided process design course based on commercially available design software used by practicing chemical engineers. From 1982 to 1993, he was the worldwide distributor of an academic version of the Monsanto FLOWTRAN simulation program. During this period, 190 copies of the program, for 14 different computer operating systems, were distributed to chemical engineering departments in 23 different countries. He has taught many continuing education courses and has been instrumental in the training of a generation of industrial engineers in the area of separation processes, distillation, and computeraided process design. His expertise is sought worldwide, and continuing invitations to lecture around the globe are evidence of his teaching excellence. He has been recognized for his contributions by having been the 35th AIChE Institute Lecturer in 1983 and the recipient of the Computing in Chemical Engineering Award of the AIChE CAST Division in 1988. From 1983 to 1985, he served as a national Director of AIChE and was elected a Fellow of AIChE in 1983. He is a founding member, past Executive Officer, and current Trustee of the CACHE (Computer Aids for Chemical Engineering Education) organization. The above paragraphs provide just a sampling of the expertise and accomplishments that Bob brought to his assignment as Associate Editor of Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. There are many other facts and figures that could be added to document this remarkable career, but I believe this suffices to illustrate the nature of his contributions to our field. Donald R. Paul Editor IE000105A
