First announcement

The organizing committee is pleased to announce IFSA 2011, a conference on industrial fluidization.  It will take the theme “supporting sustainable technologies”.  The conference will be held at Glenburn Lodge near Johannesburg on Wednesday 16 and Thursday 17 November 2011.  It will be preceded by a short course on fluidization, to be held on Tuesday 15 November.  The course will cover fundamentals and applications.

Fluidization in its various forms plays a key role in many industrial processes.  To manage it efficiently we need to understand it—to have the full measure of the properties of beds of particles; to understand how these properties, influenced by process variables, affect the behaviour of fluidized beds; and to know the effect of bed behaviour on performance—on process efficiencies and on reaction rates and extents.  These days we face a new challenge: besides running efficiently, industrial processes are being designed to limit their damage to the environment.  In this context we hear about “clean-coal technology”, “clean energy”, “sustainable development” and “carbon capture and sequestration”.  Fluidization has a role to play in realizing these strategies, a role we hope to explore at IFSA 2011.  We invite specialists and operators to join us.  There is much to be gained and much to learn from sharing our knowledge and experience in these matters.

South Africa is home to eight of the world’s official heritage sites.  IFSA 2011 will be held in one of them: the Cradle of Humankind—a half-hour drive from Johannesburg or Pretoria—was granted World Heritage status by UNESCO in 1999.  It is perhaps fitting that we should meet in conference at a place of great human significance on matters of industry and its role in our future.

The technical programme will include—

• Clean coal and renewable energy
• Chemical and metallurgical applications
• Modelling and computational fluid dynamics
• Fluidization fundamentals
• Auxiliary processes and novel applications

Important dates

We are still receiving abstracts, please submit to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

10 July 2011                   Acceptance of abstracts

20 August 2011             Submission of manuscripts

19 September 2011     Return of reviewers' comments

03 October 2011           Submission of final drafts