PUBLIC LECTURE ANNOUNCEMENT

Please register via email: m3tc@nus.edu.sg

SYNOPSIS

The Process Systems Engineering (PSE) Group in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Curtin University is a leader in the area of process modelling, simulation, optimization and control. It has expertise in reactive distillation technology, having contributed significantly to this technology using PSE tools in the past 15 years. Over the past many years, the Group has focused significantly on bridging the gap between theoretical and industrial practice of process control, particularly in the mineral processing industry. It currently has over 25 team members comprising of academic staff, research fellows, postgraduate students and technical support staff. The Group has also done extensive work in data pre-processing and reconciliation, control performance monitoring, process optimization and nonlinear control theory. Some of the applications in this area have focused on the evaporator process at Alcoa World Alumina Refinery, Kwinana Western Australia . This seminar will discuss results from a few of our projects and also identify future research directions of the group. Furthermore, results from the hybrid nickel leach circuit using SysCAD will be discussed. Issues for generic application of modeling and simulation to mineral processing will also be discussed.

BIOGRAPHY

Professor Tadé holds a Personal Chair of Process Systems Engineering at Curtin University and is the current Head of Chemical Engineering Department and has recently being appointed as Dean of Engineering at Curtin. He has taught advanced process control and process optimisation topics to many industrial delegates in continuing education courses (including staff from Honeywell Ltd, Hamersley Iron Pty Ltd, WMC Resources Ltd, BP Refinery Ltd, Pasminco Pty Ltd, etc). He also has successful collaborations with various companies such as Alcoa, Western Mining Corporation, Woodside Energy Ltd, CSIRO Minerals, CSIRO Petroleum, GRD MinProc Ltd, Chevron, etc, through joint research project supervision. He is currently supervising over 15 postgraduate students (15 PhD and 18 MEng students have successfully completed their theses under his supervision) and 6 post doctoral fellows in various areas of process control. Some of his research projects have been mainly on theory and practical aspects using simulation studies, demonstration on a pH rig, reactive distillation column, and plant trials. He secured funding of over $4.5M in the past 7 years from industry and the Australian Research Council for his projects. He has published 3 books and over 200 technical papers in international journals and conference proceedings. He was a Key Researcher and the Joint Engineering Program Manager for the AJ Parker CRC for Hydrometallurgy and a Key Researcher for CRC-CARE (Contaminant Assessment and Remediation of the Environment) as well as the Editor-in-Chief for the Asia-Pacific Journal of Chemical Engineering, www.apjChemEng.com published by John Wiley & Sons, UK (this was previously, the international journal "Developments in Chemical Engineering and Mineral Processing - An Australasian Research Journal").