The 5th Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory Scientific Conference
Energy, Water, Emission & Waste in Industry and Cities, 4 – 5 November 2021
Brno, Czech Republic
 
The second-largest city in the Czech Republic. Historical capital and the statutory city in Moravia

SPIL Scientific Conference 2021 will be held in hybrid mode, in conjunction with SPIL International Scientific Board Meeting. Venue: modern congress Hotel International (Best Western Premier), located in the Brno city centre, Czech Republic. The schedule is NOW UPLOADED.

SPIL Scientific Conference 2022 will be held in hybrid mode at Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno (Historical Capital and Statutory City in Moravia), Czech RepublicIt serves as a networking platform for collaboration on sustainability research.  Presented works (with active participation) in SPIL’ 21 will be entitled to the selection of Invitation to Special Issue. World leading researchers will be invited as the Plenary Speaker or Guest of Honor to provide the up-to-date insight of their respective expertise. 

List of Special Issues:

  • Journal of Cleaner Production, Elsevier (IF = 11.072)
  • Cleaner Engineering and Technology, Elsevier (Scopus Index)
  • Cleaner Waste Systems, Elsevier 
  • Journal of Environmental Management, Elsevier (IF = 8.910) to be confirmed

Registration fees are waived (no fees) – By invitation. 

However, registration is compulsory by 15 October 2021 (Extended to 20 October 2021). An electronic version of certificates will be provided for presenters and active participants*.

Type of Participation:

  • Presenters: Registration, Presentation Title and Abstract are needed. Full text is not required. Presenter will need to upload narrated slides (pre-recorded video around 10-15 minutes) at the later stage (by 25 October 2021).
  • Regular Participants: Registration is needed (create an account at the designated registration platform and make sure to fill in the personal information)

Stay tuned for more photos

Invited Plenary Lectures

World-Leading Researchers (and Journal Editors) are invited as plenary speakers to provide the up-to-date insight of their respective expertise

Prof Aoife M. Foley (Queen’s University Belfast, UK)

Short Biography:

Dr Aoife M. Foley is a Reader (Associate Professor) at the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in Queen’s University Belfast. She is Editor in Chief of Elsevier’s Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, the leading global journal in the world in the field of sustainable energy according to Google Scholar. She is also an Editorial Board Member of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers Transport and Nature’s Scientific Reports. She was a founding member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) VTS UK and Ireland Chapter in 2011.

She received her B.E. (Civil & Environmental Engineering) and Ph.D. (Energy Engineering) from University College Cork, Ireland, in 1996 and 2011, respectively. She received her M.Sc. (Transportation Engineering) from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, in 1999. Dr Foley is a Chartered Engineer (2001), a Fellow of Engineers Ireland (2012), and a Senior Member of the IEEE (2021). She is a leading international expert on energy systems, and she has successfully accessed highly competitive national, international and industry funding totalling £2.6M. Prior to joining academia in 2009, she spent 12 years in engineering management roles in industry, where she led transformative projects in energy, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals sectors.

Dr Foley’s research focuses on whole energy system analysis at the macro, meso and micro level to enhance ‘socio-techno-enviro-economic’ performance. Her research expertise covers wind power forecasting and integration, dynamic systems analysis, transport and energy market modelling, demand response using intelligent ICT, energy storage, electric vehicles, as well as battery modelling and vehicle drive cycle analysis. A key theme in her research is the interlinking of the ‘4 E’s’ of sustainability (i.e., environmental protection, social equity, economics and energy security)

 

Prof Fengqi You (Cornell University, US)

FengqiY

Short Biography:

Fengqi You is the Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor at Cornell University, and is affiliated with the Graduate Fields of Chemical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Operations Research and Information Engineering, Systems Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Applied Mathematics. He also serves as Chair of PhD Studies in Cornell Systems Engineering and Associate Director of Cornell Energy Systems Institute. His research focuses on novel computational models, optimization algorithms, statistical machine learning methods, and multi-scale systems analytics tools for smart manufacturing, digital agriculture, energy systems, and sustainability. 

He was on the faculty of Northwestern University from 2011 to 2016, and worked at Argonne National Laboratory as an Argonne Scholar from 2009 to 2011. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, and has an h-index of 65. His recent research awards (in the past five years) include National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2016), AIChE Environmental Division Early Career Award (2017), AIChE Sustainable Engineering Research Excellence Award (2017), Computing and Systems Technology (CAST) Outstanding Young Researcher Award from AIChE (2018), Cornell Engineering Research Excellence Award (2018), ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Lectureship Award (2018), and AIChE Excellence in Process Development Research Award (2019), AIChE Young Investigator Award for Innovations in Green Process Engineering (2020), Mr. & Mrs. Richard F. Tucker Excellence in Teaching Award (2020), Curtis W. McGraw Research Award from ASEE (2020), and American Automatic Control Council (AACC) O. Hugo Schuck Award (2020), AIChE Sustainable Engineering Forum Education Award (2021), as well as a number of best paper awards. 

He is currently an editor of Computers & Chemical Engineering, a consulting editor of AIChE Journal, an associate editor of AAAS journal Science Advances and of IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology , and an editorial board member of several journals (e.g. ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering and Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research). For more information about his research group: www.peese.org

Prof Sandro Nižetić (University of Split, Croatia)

Short Biography:

Sandro Nižetić, PhD, is Professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture (FESB) at University of Split (Croatia) and Head of department for thermodynamics. He has experience in theoretical and applied thermodynamics, HVAC systems, energy efficiency in buildings, rational usage of energy, utilization of renewable energy sources, and more than eighteen years of the teaching experience.

From 2005 he is an ASHRAE member and also ASHRAE student branch advisor at University of Split. From 2009 to 2013 he was UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) project coordinator in Croatia on projects related to the implementation of Energy Efficiency measures in public buildings. He was also the head of the several national research’s projects. He served as a deputy minister in the ministry of construction and spatial planning in the Croatian government and he was also a vice dean for the research at home faculty of FESB. He has visited several research and educational institutions worldwide as visiting researcher or as visiting lecturer and he is author of more than one hundred and sixty research and conference papers as well as several techno-economic case studies for industry. 

He has organized and chaired several international conferences and co-founder of the SpliTech conference (International conference on Smart and Sustainable Technologies). He is head of the laboratory for thermodynamics and energy efficiency at Faculty of FESB, University of Split (LTEF-Laboratory). Currently he is Editor in Chief of Energy Sources Part A journal (Taylor&Francis) and Associate Editor in International Journal of Energy Research (Wiley) as well as Associate Editor in Journal of Cleaner Production (Elsevier).

 

Prof Paweł Ocłoń (Cracow University of Technology, Poland)

Short Biography:

Paweł Ocłoń works as Associate Professor at Energy Department of Cracow University of Technology. His research area covers Renewable Energy, Heat Transfer, Energy Storage and Energy Efficiency. In last years he has co-authored over 60 ISI indexed papers. Prof. Ocłoń is an Associate Editor of Journal of Cleaner Production, Co-Editor in Chief of Cleaner Engineering and Technology (Elsevier) and Editor in Chief of Archives of Thermodynamics (published by Polish Academy of Sciences). He is also regular reviewer of many ISI indexed journals, as well as EU projects. For his scientific achievements he recieved an award of Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland, and a three-years Fellowship for Outstanding Young Researchers in 2017. Prof. Ocłoń is a coordinator of RESHeat project (Renewable energy system for residential building heating and electricity production) funded within the Horizon2020 framework in which the project consortium develops a Renewable-based system for building heating, cooling and electrical Energy production.

Guests of Honour

Guests of Honour with long-standing experience and/or industrial research background are invited for knowledge exchanging

Prof André Bardow (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Short Biography:

André Bardow is professor for energy & process systems engineering at ETH Zurich. He is also director of the Institute for Energy and Climate Research (IEK-10) at the German national lab Forschungszentrum Jülich.

He was professor and director of the Institute of Technical Thermodynamics at RWTH Aachen University (2010-2020). He was a visiting professor at Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara (2015/16). He earned his Ph.D. degree at RWTH Aachen University.

André is a fellow of the Royal Chemical Society and chairs the Technical Committee for Thermodynamics of VDI – The Association of German Engineers. He received the Recent Innovative Contribution Award of the CAPE-Working Party of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) in 2019, and the PSE Model-Based Innovation (MBI) Prize by Process Systems Enterprise in 2018. He was the first recipient of the “Covestro Science Award”. In 2009, he received the Arnold-Eucken-Award of the VDI-Society for Chemical Engineering (GVC).

His current research spans from molecular modeling and advanced measurements techniques for thermodynamic properties to computer-aided molecular and process design which he integrates with life-cycle assessment and sector- and economy-wide systems models to guide the transition to sustainable industries and societies.

Prof Dimitrios Gerogiorgis (The University of Edinburgh, UK)

DG-pic

Short Biography:

Dr. Dimitrios Gerogiorgis is a Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, MSc Director and Royal Society Industrial Fellow at the Institute for Materials and Processes (School of Engineering) of the University of Edinburgh, focusing on process systems modelling, design and optimisation. He holds a Diploma in Chemical Engineering (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), an MSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a PhD in Chemical Engineering (Carnegie Mellon University). His research portfolio includes the model-based development of the Alcoa ARP carbothermic aluminium reactor (Pittsburgh, USA), the NTUA vertical perlite expansion furnace (Athens, GR), the optimisation of investment planning for efficient polygeneration energy systems (Imperial College London), the systematic methodology for interval arithmetic evaluation of candidate flowsheets, the first comparative economic evaluation of batch vs. continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing strategies (Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing), and significant advances in systematic multi-objective dynamic optimisation of beer fermentation (WestBeer, MolsonCoors). He held another Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng)Industry Fellowship, and has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications in journals and book series. He has been recognized with the Academy of Athens L. Mousoulos Research Excellence Prize (2015), a High Commendation for the IChemE Global Food and Drink Award (2017), the Best Oral Presentation Award of the 3rd CSIRO International CFD Conference (Australia), and an RSE Scottish Crucible membership (2015). He has delivered invited lectures at McGill University (Canada), Univ. Rovira i Virgili (Spain), the Max Planck Institute (Potsdam, Germany) the Universities of Maribor (Slovenia) and Budapest/BUTE (Hungary), and many in the UK. The course on Oil & Gas Systems Engineering he has developed in collaboration with Atkins/SNC Lavalin (now Kent, Aberdeen) has been shortlisted for the IChemE Global Education & Training Award (2015). membership (2015). He has delivered invited lectures at McGill University (Canada), Univ. Rovira i Virgili (Spain), the Max Planck Institute (Potsdam, Germany) and the Universities of Maribor (Slovenia) and Budapest/BUTE (Hungary). The course on Oil & Gas Systems Engineering he has developed in collaboration with Atkins (Aberdeen) has been shortlisted for the IChemE Global Education & Training Award (2015).

Prof Ignacio E. Grossmann (Carnegie Mellon University, US)

Short Biography:

Ignacio E. Grossmann (B.S. Universidad Iberoamericana; M.S., Ph.D. Imperial College) is the R. R. Dean University Professor of Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon, and director of the “Center for Advanced Process Decision-making.”

A member of the National Academy of Engineering, he has received many awards from AIChE and INFORMS, including the Sargent Medal by the Institution of Chemical Engineers in 2015, and the distinction of being named “One of the Hundred Chemical Engineers of the Modern Era” by AIChE in 2008.

He has honorary doctorates from the Technical University of Dortmund, Abo Akademi, University of Maribor, University of Cantabria, Russian Kazan Technological University, University Nacional del Litoral, University of Alicante, and RWTH Aachen University

His research interests are in mixed-integer, disjunctive and stochastic programming, energy systems, water networks, and planning and scheduling for enterprise-wide optimization. He has authored over 700 papers and supervised 62 Ph.D. and 16 M.S. students. He has recently authored the book “Advanced Optimization for Process Systems Engineering”.

Prof Iqbal M Mujtaba (University of Bradford, UK)

Short Biography:

Prof Iqbal M Mujtaba is a Professor of Computational Process Engineering and is currently Associate Dean (Learning, Teaching & Quality) of the Faculty of Engineering & Informatics at the University of Bradford. He was Head of the School of Engineering at the University of Bradford from 2016-2018. He obtained his BSc Eng and MSc Eng degrees in Chemical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET) in 1983 and 1984 respectively and obtained his PhD from Imperial College London in 1989. He is a Fellow of the IChemE, a Chartered Chemical Engineer. He was the Chair of the European Committee for Computers in Chemical Engineering Education from 2010-2013 and the Chair of the IChemE’s Computer Aided Process Engineering Special Interest Group from 2012-2019. He is currently an Associate Editor for Asia Pacific Journal of Chemical Engineering, South African Journal in Chemical Engineering, Chemical Product & Process Modelling and an Editorial Board Member of Desalination.

Professor Mujtaba leads research into dynamic modelling, simulation, optimisation and control of batch and continuous chemical processes with specific interests in distillation, industrial reactors, refinery processes, desalination, wastewater treatment and crude oil hydrotreating focusing on energy and water. He has managed several research collaborations and consultancy projects with industry and academic institutions in the UK, Italy, Hungary, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Qatar, South Africa, Iraq, Algeria, China, Libya, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

He has published more than 350 technical papers and has delivered more than 75 invited lectures/seminars/plenaries/keynotes/short courses around the world. He has supervised 35 PhD students to completion and is currently supervising 8 PhD students. He is the author/co-author of (1) ‘Batch Distillation: Design & Operation’ (text book) published by the Imperial College Press, London, 2004 (2) ‘Wastewater treatment by Reverse Osmosis’ published by CRC Press, 2020. He is one of the co-editors of the books (1) ‘Application of Neural Networks and Other Learning Technologies in Process Engineering’, Imperial College Press, London, 2001 (2) ‘Composite Materials Technology: Neural Network Applications’ CRC Press, 2009, (3) ‘The Water-Food-Energy Nexus’, CRC Press, 2017, (4) ‘Water Management: Social & Technological Perspective’, CRC Press, 2018.

Prof Petr Stehlik, Dr.h.c., (Brno University of Technology, CZ)

Short Biography:

  • Director of Institute of Process Engineering, Brno University of Technology
  • Vice President of the Czech Society of Chemical Engineering
  • Member of Supervisory Board and Co-founder of EVECO Brno, engineering and contracting company which closely cooperates with academia and whose research activities are based on up-to-date research and development results and distinct innovative potential (1996 – present)
  • Consultant for HTRI, worldwide recognized research company (Heat Transfer Research, Inc.), College Station, Texas, USA (1991 – 1996, 2011 – present)
  • Implementation of novel DeDiox technology, W.L.GORE & Assoc., USA, Germany (2002 – present)

Prof Ferenc Friedler (Széchenyi István University, HU)

Short Biography:

Professor at Széchenyi István University (SzIU) and head of National Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence at SzIU, Hungary. His main research activity is related to the developments and applications of effective methods for process design and operation, especially, for process network synthesis, heat exchanger network synthesis, process integration, energy savings, supply chain management, wastewater treatment, process reliability engineering, and batch process scheduling. 

He is one of the founders of the P-graph framework that provides a theoretical basis for a wide range of applications in process synthesis. Supervised more than one hundred national and international R&D projects. Founder, chair, and co-chair of international scientific conferences. Board member of the European Federation of Chemical Engineers (EFCE) and member of the Computer Aided Process Engineering Working Party of the EFCE. Graduated in mathematics, received CSc and DSc degrees in chemical engineering. Honored with several awards including Knight’s Cross Order of Merit and John von Neumann Prize.

Prof Qiuwang Wang (Xi’an Jiaotong University, CN)

Short Biography:

Dr. Qiuwang Wang, Professor of School of Energy & Power Engineering, Dean of Department for Undergraduate Education, Executive Director of International Joint Research Laboratory of Thermal Science and Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. He was a visiting scholar at City University of Hong Kong from May 1998 to March 1999, a guest professor at Kyushu University of Japan from September to December 2003, and a senior visiting scholar at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA from December 2012 to June 2013.

His research interests include heat transfer enhancement and its applications, high-temperature/high-pressure heat transfer and fluid flow, transport phenomena in porous media, numerical simulation, prediction & optimization, etc. He is a Fellow of ASME, a China Delegate of Assembly for Intl Heat Transfer Conference (AIHTC), a member of Scientific Council of Intl Centre for Heat & Mass Transfer (ICHMT), a Vice President of Chinese Society of Engineering Thermophysics in Heat & Mass Transfer. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Energy Storage and Saving, an Associate Editor of Heat Transfer Engineering, and Editorial Board Members for several international journals such as Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Energy Conversion and Management, Energy, Applied Thermal Engineering, etc. He is founding chair of International Workshop on Heat Transfer Advances for Energy Conservation and Pollution Control (IWHT) (every two years since 2011, 2011-Xi’an, 2013-Xi’an, 2015-Taipei, 2017-Las Vegas, 2019- Novosibirsk, 2021-Harbin). He has also delivered more than 50 Invited/Keynote lectures in international conferences or foreign Universities. He has also been authors or co-authors of 4 books and more than 200 international journal papers. He has obtained more than 40 China Invent Patents and 4 US Patents.

Prof Robin Smith, The University of Manchester (United Kingdom)

Presentation Title: Process Integration – Current Perspectives

Short Biography

  • Director of the Centre for Process Integration in the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science of The University of Manchester.
  • Co-founder of Process Integration Limited and Process Asset Integration Management Limited (ProAim), both spin-out companies from the University.
  • Extensive industrial experience with Rohm & Haas in process investigation, production and process design, and with ICI in process modelling and process integration.
  • Acted extensively as a consultant to industry in process integration projects. 
  • Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering
  • Fellow IChemE

Prof Zdravko Kravanja, University of Maribor (Slovenia)

Presentation Title: Synthesis of Sustainable Regenerative Systems – from Concepts to Applications

Short Biography:

Zdravko Kravanja is a Professor and the Dean in the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the University of Maribor, Slovenia.
He joined the university after several years in industry (1981-1985). He was Visiting Researcher (1988-89) and Visiting Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, US (1997), and Guest Professor at Danmarks Tekniske Universitet, Lyngby on several occasions (from 1998 on). He was awarded with Pannonia Award in 2015 and Slovenian state price – Zois award for excellence in science in 2017. He was President of the Slovenian Academic Association for Engineering and Natural Sciences (SATENA) (2010-2011). He has recently become an associate member of Slovenian Academy of Engineering. His research over the years has been devoted mainly to the development of algorithmic techniques, strategies, and computerised tools for sustainable Process Systems Engineering, including Heat and Water Integration. Together with Professor Grossmann, he has developed a unique mixed-integer process synthesizer shell called MIPSYN, now upgrading to MIPSYN-Global. Recently, his research has been oriented towards the synthesis of sustainable systems, e.g. renewable based biofuel supply networks, using multi-objective optimization and monetary based sustainability measurements, sustainability profit and sustainability net present value. He has (co)-authored around 160 publications in scientific journals.

keynote speakers

Dr Farooq Sher, Nottingham Trent University (UK)

Presentation Title: Climate Change, Carbon Reduction Drivers and Energy Trilemma

Short Biography:

Dr Farooq Sher is Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering at Nottingham Trent University. His undergraduate degree was in Chemical Engineering, followed by MSc Chemical Engineering from the University of Leeds UK. He was awarded PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nottingham UK. Dr Sher has been involved in the commissioning and operation of a fluidised bed combustor, a UK Engineering and Physical Research Council funded project, the overall budget of the project was £1 million. Dr. Sher is President of the International Society of Engineering Science and Technology (ISEST). ISEST is a non-profit independent organisation founded in 2007. The ISEST is an organisation of compatible scientists, professionals, engineers, academicians, technologists, students and freelancers that promotes education and research activities in the field of Science Engineering and Technology worldwide to outfit the needs for the better future of society. Dr Farooq Sher is Editor in Chief of Science and Technology Journal, Associate Editor of Cleaner Chemical Engineering Journal as well as Associate Editor of Journal of Engineered Fibers and Fabrics. Furthermore, he is Editorial Board Members for several international journals such as Experimental Results, Frontiers in Chemical Engineering, Sustainability, Energies, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Processes, Environmental Health Insights, Air, Soil and Water Research Journal and Encyclopedia etc. He is a Fellow of Higher Education Academy (HEA) UK. He is an Associate Member of the Institute of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), Senior Member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and Professional Engineering Member of Engineers Australia (IEAust). He is also involved in various forms of community work such as the British Red Cross and STEM Ambassador for youngsters to value them in their lives and careers. Dr. Sher has also been an author or co-author of more than 150 international journal research papers. He has published several book chapters, reviews and editorials apart from this he is serving as a Scientific Committee Member of different international conferences and workshops. He has reviewed thousands of research papers for several high impact journals. He has been awarded a Top Reviewer for Engineering in 2018 and 2019 from Publons Academy.

More information on the keynote speakers are available in the Schedule.

Distributions of Participants