7^th World Congress on Petrochemistry and Chemical Engineering November 13-14, 2017 Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Joseph D Smith has a PhD in Chemical Engineering with 25 years experience in the Chemical and Petrochemical Industries. He has published over 40 papers, has given more than 80 conference papers and holds eight patents. He contributed two chapters to the John Zink Combustion Handbook and published one chapter in the Industrial Burner Handbook. He serves as an expert witness for Flare Performance and Hydrocarbon Processing. He has developed and applied comprehensive CFD models for optimization of industrial scale combustion equipment. He has founded and led startup companies that provide engineering services for the petrochemical and fossil energy industries and most recently focused on developing advanced sensor technology to quantify flare performance. He has worked for several companies including Dow Chemical, Cabot Corporation and Koch Industries and currently holds the Laufer Energy Chair at Missouri University of Science and Technology (formally Missouri Rolla).

Increasing production of gas via fracking technology in the United States has led to the re-emergence of the chemical industry in the US with several new chemical production facilities built in the gulf coast region. Many of these new production facilities include large multi-point ground flares (MPGF). Low-profile MPGFs are very efficient in processing large quantities of flare gas yet pose significant design challenges including elongated flames, high radiation flux to surrounding equipment and associated personnel safety. CFD tools have been used to analyze MPGFs having hundreds of flare burner tips surrounded by specially designed wind fences operated in a chemical plant. This presentation provides an overview of these flares and discusses recent analysis using a transient LES based CFD tool called C3d. This tool includes governing physics to describe soot formation, radiant flux, flame shape and height for an operating industrial scale MPGF. Previous model verification has been conducted for large pool fires and the code has validated for simulating flare performance by comparing measured flame height/shape and radiation flux to simulation results for single burner and three-burner tests when burning ethylene. Comparing transient predictions to steady state results illustrates the need to use transient analysis to capture flame dynamics and associated emissions production and radiation flux during operation of MPGFs in chemical plants. Using the right tool to correctly analyze these complex combustion systems is critical to safe and efficient operation of MPGFs to minimize environmental impact and reduce safety risks.

Craig L Hill is the Goodrich C White Professor at Emory University, works on solar fuels, smart materials, catalytic anticancer drugs and reaction mechanisms. His group uses polyoxometalates (POMs) in much of this research. He has developed catalysts for many processes with some patents licensed. He has won about 20 national and international awards and his 600+ papers with ~130 co-workers have been cited more than 25,700 times for an H index of 81.

Solar water splitting (conversion of sunlight and H₂O to H₂ fuel and O₂ or sunlight and H₂O plus CO₂ to fuel and O₂) is a potential solution to our growing energy availability and environmental concerns. The huge international effort to produce “solar fuel” (artificial photosynthesis) is commensurate with the funding from governments for this research and its potential importance. Statement of the Problem: While we have solar electricity and this is now economically competitive with conventional electricity, we need fuel for many large-scale uses including ship and air transportation. Thus, there is a global effort to realize solar fuel. Solar fuel generation requires three unit operations, a water oxidation catalyst (WOC), generally viewed as the success-limiting factor, a light absorber-charge separator and a reduction (fuel formation) catalyst. We will describe the use of transition metal oxygen anion clusters (polyoxometalates or POMs), as H₂ generation catalysts and more importantly, WOCs. After our initial papers on POM WOCs, many groups have made these molecular versions of metal oxide WOC films and conducted a range of mechanistic and other experiments. We will describe the new POM WOCs that work in acid and how WOCs can be interfaced with photo electrodes to generate H₂ and O₂. Mechanistic studies of the four-electron-transfer process to split water, the first of their kind, will be presented and the implications of this research discussed.