Seminar, Safety and Serendipity

September saw a surfeit of events and programmes – Students CHEMCON and IIChE Council Meeting at Anantapur, CHEMCON 2006 NOC Meeting, Investiture ceremony of Student Chapter at Datta Meghe College of Engineering, Meeting of the Board of Studies in Chemical Engineering of the Mumbai University and last but not least the workshop on Process Development and Scale-up in Fine Chemical Industry at Chiplun.

As one of the architects of the Chiplun workshop I was excited by three features –
the collaborative efforts between two regional centres of IIChE (Mumbai and Lote)
the interaction between academia and industry and
the customer driven content

Seminars and symposia can be a big let-down if you peg your expectations high. I look for one technical take-away and more importantly look forward to network with other professionals. One of the more interesting presentations at this workshop examined the safety considerations in scaling up reactions from laboratory to commercial plant. It had serendipitous moments for me.

Here are two resources which capture that content and excitement

A Checklist for Inherently Safer Chemical Reaction Process Design and Operation

Chemical Reaction Engineering for Safety