Honeywell announced the winner of its fifth annual student competition dedicated to the encouragement of design and innovation in the process industry. This year’s competition, which focused on the use of Honeywell’s dynamic process simulation technology, UniSim® Design, was won by Davide Bocciardo, a postgraduate student, from the University of Edinburgh, for his entry “Customising UniSim Design: membrane separation and its application to carbon capture".
Davide was presented with his award by Orhan Genis, vice president-sales, Honeywell Process Solutions EMEA, during the conference opening ceremony here where Honeywell is currently conducting its annual EMEA Users’ Group Conference. As the winner of the 2012 competition, Davide will be attending the full three-day conference in Istanbul, November 13-15, and will have the opportunity to present his winning ideas to all of Honeywell’s EMEA customers and partners. In addition, Davide’s professor and project advisor, Stefano Brandani, will be able to choose a training course for himself or a colleague at the nearest Honeywell world-class automation college.
Davide’s winning entry "Customising UniSim® Design: membrane separation and its application to carbon capture" focused on the creation of a customised user unit operation into UniSim® Design: Membrane_UoE. The innovative aspect of this investigation consists in the type of implementation carried out: Membrane_UoE is completely integrated into the simulation environment and it can be used to run process simulations similarly to the common unit operations available in the software. A multi-stage membrane process design applied to post-combustion carbon capture from a coal-fired power plant is presented. A detailed economic analysis is also carried out: as a result of this investigation, membrane technology shows promising results compared with the state-of-the-art solvent based capture.
“Once again this year, we’ve been overwhelmed with the outstanding quality and creativity of the responses to our annual design competition,” said Orhan Genis. “To see the next generation of young engineers, such as Davide, apply such aptitude, intelligence and flair to the call of ‘doing more with less’ is immensely satisfying. Only by exposing young talent to the latest technology and tools available will they be equipped to address the future challenges of this fast-paced and constantly evolving industry."
