06 October 2006
Carbon capture project takes top prize at IChemE awards |
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BP's Algerian joint venture comes out on top at process industry oscar night
BP clinched two awards, including the highly coveted Entec Medal. They impressed the judges with their large scale carbon capture and storage project at In Salah in Algeria. The joint venture with Sonatrach and Statoil, which came on line in 2004, captures a million tonnes of CO2 annually, before injecting it into underground aquifers. Elsewhere on the programme, BP's daring engineering to extract gas under challenging conditions in the Rhum field captured the Haden Freeman Award for Engineering Excellence.
Pfizer's new route to produce Pregabalin won the other major prize, the Astra Zeneca Award for Green Chemistry and Engineering. Pfizer can now separate the different components of a racemicmixture at the start of the drug's manufacturing process, saving tonnes of reagent and eliminating waste streams. Nanotecture scooped the new Shell Energy Award for its supercapacitor which can start truck engines when batteries are flat. The novel device has the potential to save up to 4 billion litres of diesel fuel cutting CO2 emissions by 40 million tonnes per year. Merck and Co’s Vice President, Jeanne Stahl, flew in from the USA to present the MSD Excellence in Safety Award to Fabricom. Their Offshore Access System uses advanced heave-compensated technology to safely connect floating vessels to rigid platforms at sea. BASF IT Services received the AspenTech Award for Innovation in IT. Their new data capture system is capable ofsaving one million sheets of A4 paper every year.
Dunwell Engineering of Hong Kong beat off tough competition from several multinationals to win the ABB Engineering Services Environment Award. Instead of burning used lubricant, the company transforms it into higher value oils through the application of vibrating membrane lubricant recycling technology.
AWE's unique combination of evaporation and reverse osmosis to treat radioactive effluent for safe discharge secured the IChemE Water Award. Meanwhile, Carbon8's equally effective treatment of CO2 emissions gained the Chemistry Innovation Award for Green Chemical Technology. The IChemE Award for Manufacturing Improvement saw two winners: Bayer Cropscience for batch processing and Huntsman Polyurethanes for continuous processing. IChemE President, Greg Lewin, congratulated the winners, "We recognise and reward those who demonstrate a clear commitment to process excellence. The diversity of entries in this year's programme serves only to illustrate that chemical engineering truly is a profession without boundaries and chemical and process engineers are playing a major role in finding innovative solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing society.” He thanked the sponsors and supporters before adding, "Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the Institution’s Royal Charter. The 2007 awards will form part of a series of special events to celebrate our Jubilee; I look forward to seeing a bumper crop of entries for what looks set to be another very special evening." For further information on, or to discuss opportunities around the 2007 IChemE Awards Programme, Notes for Editors
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Over 400 process industry professionals and their guests gathered in
London last night to celebrate innovation and excellence at the 2006
IChemE Annual Awards. The
popular science broadcaster Adam Hart-Davies was on hand at London's
Banqueting House to tear open the envelopes and announce the winners
across 12 categories
from a short list that included 45 entries. 
Collaboration between academia and industry proved a winning team for Eindhoven University of Technology and the Institut fur Mikrotechnik Mainz . Their PrOx carbon monoxide-removing micro-reactor landed the Chemistry Innovation Award for Applied Catalysis and Colloid Science.