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Editorial

Issue 10 February 2004

As foreshadowed in the last PIN News my erstwhile colleague, Roshan Jachuck, has taken leave of absence from the School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials at Newcastle University, and is now based at Clarkson University in Upper New York State in the USA. His interests will primarily involve research rather than teaching as he sets up a PI Research Centre to catalyse and develop the North American interest in PI Technology. He is accompanied by Phil Leveson, a Research Associate, who has been working with him on the use of spinning disc reactors for polymer manufacture. Meanwhile, as may be apparent, the PI Network and our associated website has been de-coupled from Newcastle University. This is in recognition of the more general PI activity which is now under way at a number of UK centres and also the fact that our funding is no longer exclusively provided from EPSRC via the University.

Readers may be interested to learn that Dunlop Standard Aerospace Group has recently concluded an agreement with Protensive Limited for the manufacture and worldwide marketing of spinning disc reactors. It is expected that there will be considerable synergy between the two organisations in exploiting rotating equipment for PI in several important areas.

Our next PIN Meeting to be held at Heriot-Watt University on Thursday 3rd June 2004 will concentrate on the opportunities for using PI Technology for offshore and sub-sea applications. This is an area that has traditionally been flagged as benefiting from ultra-compact equipment. However, the extreme conservatism in the industry militates against the adoption of new technology, particularly if a large oil field development could be compromised by any malfunction of an intensified plant component. We hope the meeting will be a small step towards a resolution of the situation.

Professor Colin Ramshaw
colin.ramshaw@bun.com
February 2004.

Updated: 26 February, 2004
 

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