Carlos Claros of MWH Americas presented a succinct summary of the benefits of anaerobic treatment for high strength COD/BOD (organic) loaded wastewater streams. In industry, about 65% of the successful applications have been in the food, food and animal processing, agricultural, and beverage industries.

The plant giant miscanthus (GM), a grass of Japanese origins, is proving to be a viable contender for a land-efficient biomass source of biofuels. A patented hybrid has been developed that can yield 25 tons/acre (5 times more that switchgrass), and produces a bio-oil that can be used as boiler fuel, further processed into other fuels or value added products, or reformed to generate hydrogen.

Whether getting in or getting out, successful business level transactions are dependent upon an accurate and insightful valuation of the business, its assets, income capabilities, and the business's place in the market. On Tuesday, Clinton Bogart, VP of the Industrial Valuation and Advisory Services group at CB Richard Ellis, presented the tools and techniques that have brought him and his company to a leadership position in the field.

Current research on the use of new structures in zinc oxide nano-wires to enhance PV cell efficiency is being performed at Georgia Tech University, and some preliminary results were presented by Mallarie McCune on Tuesday.

With the rise in the world’s population and resultant increased need for water in agriculture and power generation, shortages could develop without creative water reuse schemes. One area of high interest is utilizing (post-processed) municipal wastewater for cooling tower make-up in thermoelectric power plants.

As the world faces increasing energy challenges, one of the holy grails is a way to use waste carbon gasses to create new fuels or other high-value products. The ability to capture CO/CO2 to make a combustible fuel offers the possibility of a low/no-CO2 fuel. LanzaTech is currently piloting a CO/CO2 capture process, using a proprietary microbe that extracts carbon gasses from the air, to make fuel ethanol, using the basic oxygen furnace (BOF) gas from a steel mill in China. Roughly 30% of the carbon is converted into ethanol.

Dr. Benny Freeman of the University of Texas at Austin presented some promising results of his team’s efforts to coat membrane surfaces with materials that greatly reduce fouling rates, and also allow for more effective cleaning when necessary.

Dr. F. E. (Emil) Jacobs is the vice president of Research and Development for ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company. His keynote address "The Energy Challenge: Providing Sustainable Supplies to Meet Growing Demand," was a standing-room only affair.

In his keynote address to the AIChE Spring 2011 Conference, Dr. F. Emil Jacobs, VP of R & D, ExxonMobil Research and Development Company, discussed the company's views on the outlook for energy over the next 20 years, taking into consideration population growth and economic activity expansion and how they will affect energy use and demand.

One of the more interesting concepts in dealing with waste materials is the desire to convert them to higher value materials for reuse or as feed stocks for existing chemical and pharmaceutical processes. Due to the large volume of cellulosic-based wastes, the pyrolysis of cellulose to levoglucosan and other anhydrosaccharides (AS) is a current area of study for a research group at the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences (ICES) in Singapore.

Who said the Spring Meeting starts Monday? For many it started Sunday by attending the various leadership and training sessions going on at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. I was fortunate to attend a very interesting networking and leadership forum sponsored by the AIChE Chicago local section. The purpose was for leaders from other sections to gather and discuss best practices and share experiences. The talk was fast and furious, but I jotted down a few interesting tidbits. I hope you’ll think about them and comment on what your section does for best practices!