9th UK Particle Technology Forum
Edinburgh, UK, Poland, June 24-25, 2008

This year, the UK Particle Technology Forum attracted 60 delegates to Edinburgh for two days of talks from leading European researchers, the Young Researchers Award Presentations, a display of 35 Posters and the opportunity for networking with colleagues from across the UK. Delegates were predominantly postgraduate students from eleven institutions but six industrial organisations were also represented.

The Particle Technology Forum is an informal meeting bringing together researchers, especially young people, active in all aspects of particle technology in the UK. The forum aims to support developments in the subject and to promote networking between different research groups, students and industry. The primary supporters of the forum are the IChemE Particle Technology Subject Group, with sponsorship this year from GSK, P&G and Unilever.

The forum is an annual event hosted by university departments in rotation. The 2007 forum was held at Cambridge University. The next Forum will be at Birmingham University in the last week of June 2009. The Leslie J. Ford Lecture was delivered this year by Sotiris Pratsinis of ETH Zurich. He spoke on “Functional Nanoparticles made in Flames: Particle Coagulation at High Concentrations”. There were two keynote talks. The first by Grant Campbell of the Satake Centre at Manchester University was titled “Cereals: the origin and future of particulate processing”. The keynote on the final day of the conference was delivered by Philippe Marchal of ENSIC-INPL in Nancy, France. His talk on “Rheology of Powders” described a novel vibrating cell rheometer and an associated powder rheology model based on non-Newtonian fluid viscosity.

Roberta Pacciani (centre) of Cambridge University receives her Young Researchers Award first prize from Prof Stef Simons and Dr Judith Bonsall

The finals of the Young Researcher Awards in Particle Technology took place at the Forum. More than twenty Ph.D. students submitted abstracts of their work for the competition. A shortlist of six was selected by the panel of eminent judges from industry and academe. The finalists each made a presentation at the Forum and answered questions on their research. The first prize was awarded to Roberta Pacciani of Cambridge University for her talk “The effect of the concentration of CO2 on its uptake by Ca-based solid sorbents”. The second and third prizes went to Fernando Cardenas-Lizana of Heriot-Watt University and to Gareth Morris of Imperial College.

There was also a competition to find the best Student Posters at the Forum. From the 28 posters presented by students, prizes were awarded to:

• First: Gilda Gasparini, Loughborough University.
• Second: Chuan Wang, Leeds University.
• Third: Graham Calvert, Leeds University.

Prizes for the competitions were sponsored by the Particle Technology Subject Group of IChemE, P&G and Unilever.

A copy of the Forum Proceedings can be obtained from www.cpe.hw.ac.uk/ptf9/Proceedings.pdf

Dr. Derek Wilkinson, Heriot-Watt University. UK. Email: D.Wilkinson@hw.ac.uk