Process Intensification and
Miniaturisation (PIM) are
emerging as important components of sustainable technologies in biological, chemical,
environmental and energy conversion technologies. The attributes of process
intensification and miniaturization are now accepted widely by industry and policy makers.
What is Process Intensification?
The PIM Group at Newcastle University is playing a major international
role in shaping the future of the processing industries through the development of novel
approaches to equipment design and process synthesis with the aim of intensifying and
miniaturising process plants and making them environmentally friendly and flexible in
terms of manufacturing capabilities and providing rapid response to market demand.
MAIN RESEARCH AREAS
The last five years has also seen the development of processes and materials in Particle, Separation, Environmental technologies. More recently, Bioprocess Intensification and Intensified gasification technologies have been developed which include intensified gas and water remediation techniques. As a result, a number of patent applications have been made.
These intensified technologies are environmentally friendly, interdisciplinary and provide platform for innovation in several other disciplines. Due to the great emphasis given to sustainable energy and power generation from biomass and biomass-waste, the research of the group is now integrated to achieve this goal with close collaboration with industry and academia within a highly interdisciplinary research environment.
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| Polymer used in gas-cleanup |
The long term objective is to generate power from biomass in which both bioprocess and chemical process intensifications are used both in the core process and in the environmental remediation processes. In the short term, the research will concentrate on intensified gasification, water and gas cleaning technologies, separation processes for crude oil water emulsions, development of novel catalyst support and catalysts for gas quality control. This research will be extended into the area of intensification of biofuel production.
Structured Catalysts
Research has been initiated in the development
of in-vitro organ engineering by demonstrating that the animal cell response is dependent
on the cell support architecture. The development of in-vitro cell support system and
related tissue culture discover
17 February, 2009
stem cell culture has started with four Departments in
the Medical Faculty of Newcastle University, and work on the intensification of
biochemical reactor and sensors has begun. Research in Bioprocess intensification will be
continued as part of the collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine (tissue engineering,
supported bacterial and enzymatic reactions).
Two EPSRC grants have enabled further theoretical and exploitation studies to be carried out with Sheffield and Birmingham Universities on flow induced phase inversion phenomena. In intensified materials destructuring, industrial support led to a novel oil-water separation that has been applied to emulsions produced in nuclear reprocessing. The process is being patented by BNFL and extended to include crude oil-water separation on the sea bed. Work in the areas of electric field intensification of surfactant-mediated separations, nano-particle technology and ultra sonic enhancement techniques has been patented.
