EUROPEAN FEDERATION OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
Working Party of Multiphase Fluid Flow

Minutes of the Business Meeting

• Meeting
  The meeting took place on the occasion of the 4-th European Congress of Chemical Engineering (Granada, Spain, 21-25 September, 2003).

• Welcome
  Prof Drahoš welcomed the participants, distributed copies of the auxiliary source material and outlined the agenda.

1. Approval of the last Minutes (Prague 2002)
   The minutes were approved without objections.

2. Presentation of Prof Diaz on Fluid dynamics in the steel converter reactor
   Prof Diaz gave interesting talk on the above subject. The audience highly appreciated the cross-fertilizing aspects of the presentation.

3. New members
   New members - representatives: Dr J. Clapham (UK), Prof J. Teixeira (Portugal), Prof K. E. Wirth (Germany).
   Guest member: Prof M. Sommerfeld (Germany)
   It was agreed that WP will not accept any personal suppliants in the case of unavoidable absence of WP members at the business meetings.

4. Future WP activities and information database
   All the present WP members took part in a very fruitful discussion. Generally it was agreed that WP has a well-defined position with respect to mechanical and nuclear engineering communities. Stronger links among them would be beneficial but we have to keep our chemical engineering identity. The most important points and suggestions to the future activities can be summarised as follows:

   • Industrially important topics are needed; we have to identify new research areas interesting for industry; in this respect we have to consider critical assessment of available multiphase data; we should also take part in educational activities for industry and consider problems of industry in new EU countries.
   • The WP should pinpoint technologies that give impact to the further development of experimental and theoretical methods in multiphase flow research and teaching. Prof Mewes suggested the following topics:
     • degassing in polymer processing techniques,
     • multiphase flow in liquid metal handling processes,
     • oil-gas production technologies,
     • multiphase flow in porous materials of geological formations,
     • erosion of equipment by particles in pneumatic and hydraulic transport (lines, valves, pumps)
     • decompression of liquids in biological systems (diving and space technologies),
     • boiling and liquid phase transition in microchannels and heat flux generating equipment.
   • Presentations should be given as state of the art lectures on the occasion of WP meetings. The lecturer if they are not yet members of the WP, should have the chance to get the status of guest members. By this the WP could build up more competence in technological questions beyond the representation of organizations.
   • WP needs a mission statement that describes its main activities.

   Prof Drahoš informed about the situation with the information database on multiphase research (see www.multiphase-efce.org). The database should provide information about the current multiphase research in individual member countries. The database should enable to search according to:

   1. places (country, city, university/institute),
   2. people (names),
   3. key words (reflecting the topics and field of activity)

   The ultimate reference in the database will point to home pages of the research units and individuals. Suggested is a three-step procedure: Research Group (fills in the entry form) - National Coordinator (WP member) - Database Administrator (WP secretary). The administrator will provide the members with a simple unified electronic form (see the current demo-version at the webpage) where the information required will be filled in, and the form will be sent back via email. The national representative will be responsible for providing the information about the research in his/her own country.

   • It was agreed that the idea is OK and the importance of updated personal home pages was stressed (those of WP members should appear at our web page as soon as possible).
   • It was recommended to use the keywords compatible with the IJMF and CES journals. Prof Oliemans contacted Elsevier and the set of keywords used by CES was recently sent to Dr Ruzicka.
   • Prof Mewes suggested that the entry form should also include the contacts to other related institutions.

5. Information about 3rd EMSI meeting, Trondheim, Norway
   Prof Azzopardi briefly reported - for detail see the minutes at www.emsi.fzk.de. Prof von Rohr stressed our focus on chemical engineering.

6. Activities within the 6th FP EU
   Prof Drahoš reported that EFCE was not successful in lobbying in Brussels in the matter of topics in 6th FP, which would be closer to our fields of interest (this message was presented at the General Assembly meeting of EFCE in Granada). It is however necessary to continue these activities and to strengthen the lobbying effort with respect to the 7th FP - Prof Giot will be asked to comment the situation from the point of view of our WP.

   Prof Mewes stressed that the WP members should engage in refereeing for EU R&D programmes and/or try to encourage colleagues to do so. The projects are never better than the refereeing system is willing to act.

   Prof Diaz asked for coordination in applications for Marie Curie programmes in the 6th FP.

7. Future WP meetings
   It was decided that our next meeting will be held at the 3rd Int. Symp. on Two-Phase Flow Modelling and Experimentation, Pisa, Italy, 22-24 September 2004 (see http://www.ing.unipi.it/pisa04/). As there will not be any specialised session related to our WP, the meeting should include presentations on some topics discussed within Point 5 above and/or on topics suggested by WP members.

   The business meeting in 2005 will be held in Glasgow in conjunction with the 7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering (July 10-14).

8. Miscellaneous
   Prof Drahoš remembered the topics close to multiphase, organised within the CHISA 2004 Congress in Prague, August 22-26 (namely Topic 3, Fluid flow and multiphase systems, and Specialised symposium on multiscale aspects of bubbly flows) and asked the WP members to consider to attend or to send their students and/or colleagues.

9. Election of Chairman
   The three-year cycle for the position of Chairman was coming to an end. As immediate past chairman, Professor Azzopardi was asked to act as the returning officer. He invited nominations for the chairman by e-mail. Only the name of Professor Drahoš was proposed. The e-mail vote produced 16 votes for Professor Drahoš. There were no dissentions.

   The business meeting was closed by a traditional dinner: the delegates thanked to Prof Diaz for excellent choice of the restaurant and menu.