Professor Sunny Iyuke, Vice-President of SAIChE, presents Professor Deresh Ramjugernath with the SAIChE Gold Medal Award.
A team of researchers from UKZN, led by Professor Deresh Ramjugernath, was recently presented with the South African Institute of Chemical Engineers (SAIChE) Innovation Award at a ceremony held in Johannesburg.
The team is comprised of academics and students from the Discipline of Chemical Engineering, namely: Dr Matthew Starzak, Dr Prathieka Naidoo, Dr David Lokhat, Dr Wayne Nelson and Mr Shalendra Subramoney.
The SAIChE Innovation Award is presented to a team of chemical engineers, or to an individual chemical engineer, in recognition of their outstanding and innovative contributions to the profession or industry respectively.
The UKZN team was recognised for their research and chemical process development work undertaken in a project entitled “Innovative Process for the production of hexafluoropropylene oxide (HFPO) from hexafluoropropylene (HFP)”.
The research involves the development of a novel chemical process for the commercial manufacture of hexafluoropropylene oxide which is the major building block for fluoropolymers and fluoroelastomers which are considered super-plastics or performance-plastics.
Professor Sunny Iyuke, Vice-President of SAIChE, presents Professor Deresh Ramjugernath with the SAIChE Gold Medal Award.
Their unique chemical and physical properties allow them to be utilised in applications that were previously beyond the scope of ordinary hydrocarbon-based plastics. These plastics are used in a wide range of applications, including aerospace components, automotive components, architectural coatings, industrial machinery parts and a myriad of other applications.
The current commercial technology used for HFPO synthesis is one of liquid phase batch process; producing considerable amounts of toxic liquid effluent, which is costly to dispose of in an environmentally responsible manner.
The new HFPO technology developed by the research team is one of a gas phase process, which is undertaken in a continuous process. This alleviates the toxic and expensive effluent problem and allows for the recycling of unreacted reagents resulting in significantly higher net yields and therefore reduced raw material costs as well as a number of other economic benefits.
The team members are part of the South African Research Chair: Fluorine Process Engineering and Separation Technology and the Thermodynamics Research Unit which is one of the leading research groups in its field globally. The Thermodynamics Research Unit and the South African Research Chair spearhead a number of cutting-edge research endeavours which contribute towards chemical process development and optimisation in South Africa and internationally
