The maiden international Workshop in keeping with the tradition of UICT to bring together leaders of the industry in India and overseas on a single platform to deliberate issues relating to a topical theme and address some of the critical and neglected unit operations within the chemical engineering field, encompassed a gamut of industries from pharma to food, specialty chemicals to bulk chemicals and polymers to organic chemicals. With drying as an integral operation, one resorts to unit operations such as crystallization, filtration and subsequently drying. The efficacy of drying entails not the dryer alone but is preceded by the other unit operations and by adjusting them, the load on drying reduces thereby resulting in integrated strategy of reduction in energy consumption as well as improving efficiency of the process. Further, in the chemical engineering curriculum, CFD is not considered in adequate details and the same is addressed as well.

Commercial processes usually comprise distinct steps and chemical engineers call each step a unit operation. There are a number of unit operations common to diverse industries. The range of unit operations varies slightly, but the most common are Distillation columns, Filtration units; Reactors and Heat exchangers. Crystallisation, Filtration and Drying (CFD - acronym here is not a misnomer for Computational Fluid Dynamics) have been a neglected unit operations by the researchers and warrants relooking. Unless one takes the lead, address the issues and point out to what extent of improvement these unit operations can bring about benefits and also the science and technology required, one cannot realise the benefits of these unit operations.

The Workshop was hosted by the newly formed World Forum on Crystallisation, Filtration and Drying in conjunction with Chemical Engineering Department of UICT attended by chemical engineers, design engineers, technologists, plant managers, industrial users, academia, consultants etc. Renowned experts from Germany, Singapore, Switzerland and USA and Indian counterparts made audiovisual presentations in their areas of specialisation, presented case studies, fielded the questions with viable answers, cleared doubts, shared their expertise and experience and offered advice to the participants who also interacted with the exhibitors at the venue.

Overwhelmed with the response to the event, Prof A.B.Pandit, President extended welcome to the distinguished speakers and the large gathering of delegates. He regretted that the participants were restricted due to paucity of place and organization details. This maiden major event's objective was dissemination of latest strengths in the areas of unit operations CFD and to get useful information in deliberations and interactive sessions to enable the participants professionally implement in their institutes and industry. Dr.M.Sriram introduced some of the speakers and also convened the question-answer sessions.

Prof J.B.Joshi a source of inspiration and a main force behind organising this event inaugurated this international workshop. Complimenting the organisers, Prof Pandit and Prof Thorat, he said that CFD unit operations are of paramount importance in industries like chemical, biochemical, pharmaceutical, polymer and food. Distillation, absorption, evaporation have received good attention of researchers and practitioners and CFD, though important, have taken a back seat due to their complexity. They improve product quality, energy consumption, environmental aspect of the processes, and enhance productivity and profitability of operations thereby affecting the bottom line. By implementing appropriate science and engineering, one can increase the bottom line up to 100% particularly in specialty industry.

Prof Mujumdar a distinguished alumnus (UDCT Diamond) of UICT, is the Founder of the Society and is responsible for conceptualizing its formation. Providing the background and insights for arranging the workshop, he spoke about the World Forum on CFD. Drying is the most neglected unit operation and he involved himself in the 70s in Canada since paper was produced entailing dehydration operation viz. I kg wood fibre takes 200 kg water and to get rid of that water is cumbersome considering 400 tons per day production of standard material on a machine. Drying concept used was about 200 years old and of 5 new technologies evolved at that time including his, though technically successful, was not taken up since cost of energy was high. Quantitative comparison established that papermaking consumes more energy than steel as observed by Electric Power Research Institute.

Drying consumes a huge amount of energy varying from 10% to 25% of national industrial energy in developed countries with audited figures like 20% in Germany, 25% in Denmark, 13% in Canada and 15% in France. Almost any product that is manufactured consumes drying at some stage of its manufacture, including steel making.

Drying is a difficult operation to understand at the microscopic level and dryers were built and not designed to obtain more efficient output. Yet a simple operation like drying, the average efficiency of dryer is about 10-15% with normal amount of energy. In Canada, dryer for biotech products is operating at efficiency of 10% and yet the manufacturer is not aware of its low efficiency and the cost is passed on to the consumer, which cannot be done any longer due to emergence of new processes. When a Canadian company wanted to install a plant in Singapore, it could not be done due to exorbitant cost of real estate, which warranted change of dryer. By and large dryers even in the developed countries are extremely inefficient because they were designed when the price of oil was $2 per barrel unlike $60 today. Similar situation may also arise with other unit operations.

The drying community should share their experiences and develop it as a multidisciplinary research area. This had borne testimony by the 300-400 papers presented at international drying symposium attended by 350-400 participants from 50 countries in 1977. This brought forth a totally neglected field from nowhere to a respectable area of R&D and with problems along the way leaving most challenging things to do. This idea led to the International Workshop and Symposium on Industrial Drying held in December 2004 in Mumbai, which attracted 250 participants in symposium and 250 participants in workshop from 21 countries with 20 exhibitors. Therefore, to expand similarly at the core, one should include crystallization and filtration, which are often ancillary operations.

The 3rd edition of the Handbook of Industrial Drying has chapters on Crystallisation and Filtration by recognized experts as these topics go hand in hand with drying for many industries. For India, it would be more useful with the envisaged growth of pharmaceutical and food industries. Unfortunately, these unit operations are not thought of in adequate depth and not even mentioned in curricula of chemical engineering and this should be done. Today much of drying work is done in food engineering and agricultural engineering as compared to chemical engineering.

Prof Pandit referred to the role of Indian chemical industry particularly in specialty chemicals. The Indian chemical industry contributed to the world chemical trade to the tune of 1.5%. Contribution of Indian specialty chemical industry to the world trade is about 6%, which is driven by R & D efforts like innovation or innovative solutions. CFD unit operations essentially form the heart of specialty chemical industry like pharmaceutical sector and one cannot survive without understanding them. Through this conference, we have rekindled our interests in thinking about these unit operations and by judiciously combining the basic theory with the fundamentals as well as the latest innovations, which are happening in these operations and thinking in terms of improvement, going back to the basics and fundamentals and implementing them thereby achieving the objective of this seminar. Thus, one and his company would professionally benefit immensely in this manner.

Deagglomeration and milling dealt by Dr.M.Kharkar warrants a separate seminar. As pointed out by Dr.Kharkar, opportunities exist and the norms are becoming stringent and every stringent norm can also be looked at every alternate opportunity. Looking at the conditions imposed by the international community as possible opportunities and if the Indian innovative talent continues to be used in the specialty chemical industry, the contribution of the present 6% to the world trade may double by 2010.

Professor G.D.Yadav and Dr.B.N.Thorat promoted as Head of Chemical Engineering Department and Professor respectively were felicitated on the occasion. With renovation and remodeling program in progress, it is intended to get ISO certification for the laboratories, showcase Chemical engineering as a vibrant profession and establish tie-up with leading universities in the world.

Prof Thorat referred to the feedback form designed to evaluate content and communication of lectures, clarity, choice of speakers, industrial relevance, pertinent comments (e.g. interactive discussions to seek solutions to the queries, whether the outcome is professionally rewarding, personally enjoyable and productive etc) to be filled in by the delegates to enable the organizers effect improvement in planning the event again in the near future in the field of industrial CFD technology.