2007-2008 Program

Past Meetings:

September Meeting: We are looking forward to the AIChE Meeting at Case on September 19th with buffet dinner! Students of members are welcome. Fees will be $20 for AIChE members, $5 for ChemE Students, and High School students. Junior High School students are usually free with their parent (AIChE will cover their costs at $5). The program will include a brief overview of CWRU ChE program and tours of the CWRU microfabrication and fuel cell labs.

October Meeting:  "Richard Stuebi"  BP Fellow for Energy and Environmental Advancement. Richard Stuebi joined the Foundation in March 2006 as the BP Fellow for Energy and Environmental Advancement.  In this role, he works with various public and private sector stakeholders to promote commercial activity in advanced energy in the Cleveland area.  Richard has nearly 20 years of experience as an executive, entrepreneur and consultant in the energy industry, with most of the past decade focused on advanced energy technologies and business opportunities.  Richard shares his perspectives on energy and environmental matters on a weekly basis through www.cleantechblog.com. Prior to joining the Foundation, Richard founded NextWave Energy, a professional firm focused on capitalizing upon new business opportunities stemming from innovative energy technologies.  As President of NextWave Energy, he assisted several emerging and established private-sector clients in various aspects of business development, including strategy and capital formation.  Previously, Richard was a senior vice president at Louis Dreyfus, the global commodity trading firm and was a management consultant in the energy practice of McKinsey & Co. Richard earned degrees in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University ."

November 14, 2007 Presentation:  “POLYMER PROPERTIES USING POLARIZED LIGHT,” Dr. Ferdinand Rodriguez will demonstrate the effects of time, temperature and stress on physical properties and transitions of polymers using polarized light with a variety of common plastics and rubbers.  The glass transition temperature and melting temperature can be affected by chain stiffness, polarity, and plasticization.  The materials used in the demonstrations include polyisobutylene, silly putty, poly (methyl methacrylate), polystyrene, poly (vinyl chloride), polyethylene, and poly (ethylene oxide).

February 28, 2008 - Student Night Presentation:  "Practical application and system design utilizing VLE data" Speaker: Paul E. Mason. Theoretical and empirical pure and binary chemical species vapor liquid equilibrium (VLE) data is available for many compounds.   Theoretically predicting VLE in multi-component systems can be both difficult and dangerous in design practices.  The extent of empirical data is limited to pure and binary systems.  It is rare that the system is binary.  Often it is necessary to estimate the equilibrium conditions for practical applications for multi-component mixtures where data may not be available at the conditions of interest.  Industries, such as semiconductor manufacturers, may have complicated vapor streams that require removal of specific compounds for environmental compliance.  One method of removal is gas absorption through chemi-adsorption utilizing a randomly packed column.  A design basis for a multi component mixture is considered where the system is also complicated by side-reactions.   

March 27, 2008 Centennial Celebration. The Cleveland Section of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) hosted a Cleveland Centennial Celebration on Thursday, March 27, 2008.  This event included local companies in the Greater Cleveland Area that employ chemical engineers, with representatives hosting booths with information about their companies and what chemical engineers do at their companies.  Booths were hosted by 

• Ben Venue Laboratories

• Go Jo 

• Lubrizol 

• Middough 

• Nalco 

• OSI Soft

• The Cleveland State University 

• URS 

 We had about 60 guests and 20 people staffing booths.  The presentation titled "Building an Advanced Energy Industry in Cleveland ” provided by Richard Stuebi of the Cleveland Foundation.

Thursday, June 26, 2008 Topic: Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact. Speaker: Bill Fisher.

e presentation on the Great Lakes Compact will provide an overview of prior attempts to protect the Great Lakes from large-scale diversions, and the constitutional authority for the individual states to enter the new compact. The six major provisions of the compact will be discussed, as well as the legal process for ratifying the compact. Ohio water use laws and the impact of the compact on individual property rights will also be covered.

2006-2007 Schedule