Lightfoot, Edwin

For details see R. Byron Bird, Waren E. Stewart and Edwin N. Lightfoot, Transport Phenomena, 2nd ed., Wiley, New York, 2002, pp. 336-340. 

Edwin Lightfoot I ve been impressed by the talks this morning. I urge fluid mechanicists to study separation processes because they are dominated by fluid mechanics. What you want is to maximize mass transfer and minimize momentum transfer. The sensitivity of momentum transfer to geometry is so much greater than the sensitivity of mass transfer that the fluid mechanics problems tend to dominate. If you look at the asymptotic results that Gary talked about, you can get useful insights into practical problems that don t require much time to develop. For example, if you examine the old problem of packed-column gas absorbers, you can show with relatively simple... 

Edwin Lightfoot I think he s right on a number of points. It seems difficult for us to connect theory, which is probably the natural focus of academics, with practical problems. We really haven t solved this. We need, in close contact with our chemical engineering departments, practitioners of chemical engineering with whom we can talk. When a company like Du Pont retires professionals early, those are the people to attract to academia because they would have the background that we might need. I think this is a very pressing need in our university and I suspect in many other places as well. 

Edwin Lightfoot Of course, but it ultimately has to be packaged in such a way that the students have access to the information available without a great deal of detailed study. Understanding orders of magnitude is clearly important. We talk about all the topics that must be in the curriculum, but there s no room for the kind of detail that experts feel is necessary. 

Edwin Lightfoot Mort, I disagree, because there are substructures in proteins that are pretty much ubiquitous, and I think it s better to study those. 

Edwin Lightfoot I would take heart from that, John, because only a few years ago, a meteorologist predicted that we were going to have an ice age because of the dust problem. So, if we make enough dust, we can solve the greenhouse problem. 

Edwin Lightfoot I have a few remarks on topics that may have been missed. First, we can divide biotechnology into the areas of bioprocessing, which is truly a chemical engineering activity, and metabolic engineering, where we re concerned with the details of the living organism. Both of these have big opportunities for us. 

Edwin Lightfoot Tom, you re being unfair because you re not counting the Ph.D. s, and that makes considerably less people. It takes a fair amount of specialization in an area like this. 

Edwin Lightfoot The reason that this happened is not the highly specialized nature of research. The reason it happened is the pressure to get money and the tendency of major professors to push their students to spend more time on research and less on course work. That s the real culprit these days. 

Edwin Lightfoot There is not a sufficient number of courses inside our department at the upper graduate level. 

Edwin Lightfoot Yes. For instance, Dale Rudd used to teach a course in process invention to the freshmen, a very successful course. That s the place to tell them what an engineer is, and they loved it. 

Edwin Lightfoot Yes, I think it will. Mort, you gave an example with the seminars. I find that in Wisconsin just walking off to lunch is bad enough, because I ll meet somebody doing something interesting, and a new project is started. In a real university, where most of us come from, the possibilities are enormous. 

Professor Edwin N. Lightfoot, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706... 

Byron Bird, R., Stewart, W.E. and Edwin, N. (2008) Lightfoot, transport phenomena, in Definition of Transfer Coefficient in Two Phases, Wiley student edition, 2nd edition, pp. 688-689. 

Transport Phenomena 2 ed by Byron Bird R, Warren E Stewart, and Edwin N Lightfoot, John Wiley Sons, 2006. 

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