EUROPEAN FEDERATION OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
Working Party of Multiphase Fluid Flow

Minutes of the Business Meeting

1. The chairman, Prof. B.J.Azzopardi, welcomed the delegates to the meeting, held in connection with the 3rd World Congress on Particle Technology. He particularly welcomed Prof. I Zun to his first meeting as the Slovenian representative, and Prof. G Hewitt, a former UK representative and now an honorary member.

2. The minutes of the 1997 meeting in Brussels were approved, with no matters arising.

3. Catalogue of Multiphase Flow Research
   Dr. Hills provided an update on progress with the catalogue. Since it had been placed on the Internet, the response had been disappointing: no new material had been sent in in 1998, although Dr Hills had contacted all the original UK contributors, plus about half the other UK institutions. Problems with the counter meant that we have no record of how many people are visiting the site.

   The Webmaster at Prof Brauner's institution in Tel Aviv had e-mailed a request to provide a link to their site, and one possible way forward was to insert the index on the Web, with links to individual institutions, who would be responsible for their own updating.

   Prof. Brauner felt we should maintain the current format for two years, and other members promised to obtain and send updates. Mr Hill said it was difficult to persuade people to give information unless the benefits to them were clear, and Prof. Azzopardi said we should work out a form for the request which would encourage participation. Proper upgrading of the site would cost more time than we could afford, and Prof. Azzopardi asked the Working Party to back a request for funds from IChemE and the EFCE. This was agreed.

   Prof. Hewitt felt the printed version was also valuable, and suggested that a journal may be prepared to publish an updated version. Prof.Azzopardi agreed to write to the editor of Multiphase Science and Technology offering this. Prof. Hewitt suggested that if similar articles could also be provided from the Americas and the Far East, this would allow for a 3-year cycle of updates. The index on the Internet could then be made to link with sites world-wide, increasing its utility.

   nformation about the catalogue had already been sent to Prof. Matsui for the Newsletter of the Japanese Society of Multiphase flow, and Prof Zun suggested that a similar entry should be made with the Information Centre for Multiphase Flow.

4. Membership
   The Secretary asked for help in finding a replacement for Dr Hassager, who resigned some years ago as the Danish representative.

   The French member society had put forward two new representatives, Dr Ferschneider and Prof. Gourdon, but it later transpired that the two previous representatives, Dr. Lemonnier and Mr. Pauchon, had not been informed. The secretary had tried unsuccessfully to contact them, and the new representatives were accepted. It was agreed that in such cases the national society should be contacted.

   The chairman was actively pursuing the possibility of a Greek representative.

5. Future meetings
   Prof. Hewitt reported on discussions between Japanese and European workers held at the European Two-Phase Flow Group (ETPFG) meeting in Portoruz, Slovenia. It was felt that there were too many groups organising too many meetimgs, and it was proposed to unite the bilateral German/Japanese and British/Japanese meetings into a European/Japanese group meeting triennially. Suggested dates were 2000, 2006 and 2012 in Japan, 2003 in Germany, 2009 in the UK and 2015 in France. When the meetings were in Europe, they would be organised jointly by the Working Party and the ETPFG, and would replace their meetings that year, although in the other years they would meet separately as usual.

   Prof. Zun said that the Portoruz meeting had also suggested setting up a Centre for Multiphase Flow studies which would organise intensive metings on restricted topics. Prof. Azzopardi thanked Profs. Hewitt and Zun for their report, but underlined that the Working Party had other strands to its activity, such as gas/solids flow, and reaction engineering. The Working Party noted the information, but did not need to take action at this stage.

   For the 1999 meeting, Prof. Giot introduced a series of Workshops held in Varna, Bulgaria in September. He had been at the 1997 Workshop, and the organiser, Prof. Boyadjiev, had suggested we might like to participate in future. Prof. Azzopardi reminded us of the ECCE2 meeting in Montpelier, France, in which it was hoped all working parties would participate; he was already involved in the organising committee. Prof. Hewitt mentioned the ETPFG meeting in London in June 1997, and also the Pisa conference in May. After some discussion, it was agreed that we would hold our next meeting at the Varna Workshop in 1999.

   For 2000, possibilities included another joint meeting with the Chemical Reaction Engineering Working party, or CHISA 2000 in Prague. It was agreed to postpone discussion on this until next year.

   There was no other business, so the chairman thanked the members, and closed the business meeting.

   An Open Forum on Differences and Similarities between gas/solid and gas/liquid flows was organised by the WP within the World Congress on Particle Technology. About 20 people attended this very successful meeting, and a lively and useful discussion took place, introduced by a number of short presentations.