TOWARDS A CIRCULAR ECONOMy

THE 31ST EDITION OF THE EUROPEAN SYMPOSIUM ON COMPUTER AIDED PROCESS ENGINEERING (ESCAPE-31)

Although COVID-19 has kept us the last two years from traveling and visiting conferences and events, the 31st edition of the ESCAPE conference commenced on 6th of June in Istanbul, virtually! There were 344 participants from all over the world with industrial and academic contributions. The topics ranged from process-product synthesis, computational tools to the application of PSE methods in biological systems and the water-energy-food nexus. The ESCAPE is the main meeting where the Computer Aided Process Engineering Working Party (CAPE-WP) meets and discuss. The conference provided a stage for the discussion how to move towards a circular economy.

By Edwin Zondervan (Professor of Process Systems Engineering at Twente University and Vice Chair of EFCE’s working party on CAPE) & Metin Türkay (Professor of Industrial Engineering at Koç University and organizer of ESCAPE-31)

The ESCAPE-31 was organized under the auspices of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE, Event no. 776), the CAPE Working party, the Chamber of chemical engineers of Turkey (KMO) and Koç University (Istanbul). The local organization of the conference was led by Prof. Metin Türkay and comprised a team of skilled professionals. In addition, the international scientific committee included 96 worldwide experts.

SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS

The conference was organized along 7 scientific themes:

Theme 1: Process-product synthesis, design and integration,
Theme 2: Methods, models and computational tools for PSE,
Theme-3: Process control and operations,
Theme-4: CAPE/PSE in energy/water/food nexus and sustainability,
Theme-5: Process operations and supply chains,
Theme-6: PSE in biological systems and processes,
Theme-7: Education in CAPE/PSE & Knowledge transfer.

In total 327 papers were presented. The figures below show the number of contributions per scientific theme and the distribution of participants respectively. Each of the themes also provided 2-5 keynote lectures, totalling to 18 keynotes and 3 plenary lectures. The proceedings were published in Computer Aided Process Engineering by Elsevier (vol. 48, ISBN 978-0-323-88506-5).

Scientific papers per theme

Contributions per country

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

There were many interesting lectures, but it is worthwhile to shortly describe the 3 plenary lectures of the conference:

Nature-inspired chemical engineering, a NICE approach to sustainability and innovation by Prof. Marc-Olivier Coppens (Ramsay Memorial professor and head of department of chemical engineering, University college London). Coppens takes resort to nature when solving the societal problems on energy, water and food. Nature is replete with well-integrated, “intensified” systems, optimized over the eons, to satisfy stringent constraints for survival by scalable processes with emergent properties. He proposes to take nature as a source of inspiration, leveraging fundamental mechanisms underpinning desirable properties (like scalability, resilience or efficiency) and applying these to engineering designs, with suitable adaptations to satisfy the different contexts of technology and nature. Coppens calls this Nature-Inspired Chemical Engineering (NICE), and the design and innovation methodology to practice it more broadly: Nature-Inspired Solutions (NIS). The proposed framework is subsequently applied to solving process intensification problems, catalytic processes, membrane separations and development of functional materials for space technology and biomedical applications.

Circular economy – a challenge and opportunity for process systems engineering? By Prof. Stratos Pistikopoulos (DTEES Eminent Professor, Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, Texas A&M University). Pistikoupolos introduced Process Systems Engineering (PSE) as the scientific discipline of integrating scales and components describing the behavior of a physicochemical system, via mathematical modelling, data analytics, design, optimization and control. PSE provides the ‘glue’ within scientific chemical engineering, and offers a scientific basis and computational tools towards addressing contemporary and future challenges such as in energy, environment, the ‘industry of tomorrow’ and sustainability. In his perspective he offered a guide towards the next generation of PSE developments by looking at its history, core competencies, current status and ongoing trends – with special attention for circularity.

PSE challenges in advanced Pharmaceutical manufacturing by Prof. Gintaras V. Reklaitis (Burton and Kathryn Gedge distinguished professor of chemical engineering, Purdue University) The chemical-pharmaceutical sector is changing fast, with new market and technological trends affecting the companies’ business strategies. Managing the pharmaceutical supply chain is, therefore, ever more complex and challenging. Reklaitis presented a complete overview of the current state of the industry and research developments; and then, to highlight how PSE can aid decision-making to assist in the creation of optimization-based decision support models. This is achieved through a multi-perspective analysis that encompasses strategic and tactical planning decision-making, in the current and future business context of the chemical-pharmaceutical industry. There is a structural lack of research addressing the most prominent trends currently driving this sector, such as patient centricity or new technological developments, thus highlighting the disruptive nature of the expected changes in a highly conservative industry.

Figure 2: Impressions of the virtual ESCAPE-31. From left to right: the WHOVA app, the plenaries by Coppens and Pistikopoulos and a concert with traditional Turkish instruments. Napoleon said: “If the earth were a single state, Istanbul would be its capital!”

CAPE-FORUM

The CAPE FORUM 2021 followed directly upon the ESCAPE-31 and was also hosted in Istanbul. CAPE FORUM is the meeting platform for students in CAPE. From 10-11 of June CAPE FORUM attracted around 39 participants who followed workshops and courses by leading authorities in the field, including Prof. Ignacio Grossmann and Prof. Larry Biegler from Carnegie Mellon University.

WHOVA – THE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT

The award winning WHOVA app allowed the participants to hover between parallel sessions, look at posters at any time they’d like and chat with colleagues during digital coffee- and lunch breaks. Lectures were recorded and could also be viewed after the conference. In a digital environment it is difficult to organize social events but the ESCAPE-31 organization managed to welcome the visitors to Turkey and Istanbul with activities varying from virtual site seeing and listening to a concert with traditional music to even an online cooking class.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The 31st edition of the ESCAPE took place last June and was hosted in Istanbul but commenced virtually. We can look back at a very successful event that delivered book volumes full of new developments in CAPE. Although we got familiar with digital conferences in the last year, we long for real conferences at real locations, where we can meet our peers, socialize and discuss! Next year we will have that chance: from 12-15 of June ESCAPE 32 will be held in Toulouse (France) and the CAPE FORUM will take place around September in the Netherlands, at Twente University.

So stay tuned and come to Twente in 2022!

Retrospective on ESCAPE-31