12 - 14/Jan/09: 4th International Conference on
Thermal Engineering
Starting with a reception at the Abu Dhabi Hilton Hotel on Sunday night 11th of January, the conference ran for three days on the PI campus with the registration, sessions and plenary talks in the Arzanah building.
In addition to the plenary and keynote talks, contributed talks were held in thirty-three sessions, organized into four parallel tracks. A poster competition was organized that involved student groups from the PI and from other universities in the UAE as well. PI lab tours were held for the participants guided by the faculty and students. Special evening events included the opening reception, a banquet sponsored by ADCO on Monday night at the Sheraton hotel, a desert safari on Tuesday afternoon and evening, and a final closing ceremony and banquet at the Hilton Hotel on Wednesday night. The organizers are grateful to Mr. Fareed Alsayed Abdulla (AGM-ED ADCO) for his generous support. The conference was chaired by Dr. Dennis Siginer, PI Assistant Provost and Chair of Arts and Sciences Program, and Dr. Ziad Zaghir Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. Under their direction, a Technical Committee was organized to select the conference papers in a peer-review process. Organizational details were handled by the local Organizing Committee. Ms. Afshha Ahmed, A&S Program Senior Administrative Assistant was instrumental in leading many facets of the organizational effort to successful fruition. The members of the Organizing Committee enormously contributed to the on-site conference planning and provided logistical support; in particular the efforts of Dr. Abdellatif Bouchalka (Physics), Dr. Andry Didenko (Mathematics), Dr. Curtis Bradley (Physics), Dr. Ghada Bassioni (Chemistry/Chemical Engineering), and Dr. Ryan Fernandez (Mathematics) are recognized with gratitude. A group of PI students helped out by working at the registration desk throughout the conference. Of course, the conference could not have taken place without the support from upper PI management and the cooperation of PI academic and support staff.
The conference’s main objective was to bring together researchers engaged in experimental, analytical, and/or theoretical studies on topics in thermal and energy engineering. The conference started out with a plenary talk by Dr. Abbas Firoozabadi, professor of Chemical Engineering at Yale University, who spoke about his research on multiphase fluid flows in multi-layer porous media, with applications in oil and gas transport/production and CO2 injection. Other highlights of the conference included keynote talks by Dr. Frank Kulacki, professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Ramesh Agarwal, professor of Engineering at the University of Washington, St. Louis, and Dr. Peter Minev, professor of Mathematics at the University of Alberta. Dr. Kulacki reported on his recent work involving two-component, two-phase flow and heat transfer in a flat microchannel, Dr. Agarwal gave a talk about some limits and regimes of computational fluid dynamics calculations, and Dr. Minev reported on his large-scale numerical simulations of incompressible fluid flows involving complex and multi-scale fluid boundary interactions.
Contributed talks were organized into concurrent sessions with titles such as Enhanced Oil Recovery, Multi-Phase Flow and Heat Transfer, Transport Phenomena in Porous Media, Micro/Nano Heat Transfer, Double Diffusive Convection, Numerical Methods in Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer, Biological Heat Transfer, Energy Management and Energy Systems, Polymer Processing Science and Technology, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration, Biofuels and Internal Combustion Engines, Melting and Solidification, Internal Flow and Heat Transfer, Applied Mathematics, and Renewable Energy.
The conference Proceedings were developed as a CD with ISBN number 978-9948-03-941-9. These CDs were distributed to participants with additional copies for the PI management and the PI library. The Proceedings CD includes the contributed conference papers and the conference program. It also includes a preface by the co-chairs, other information about the conference such as the composition of the Organizing and Technical Committees, and a promotional video about The Petroleum Institute.
History and motivation behind the ICTEA conference series
The inspiration for the ICTEA conference series originated from the desire to help provide an opportunity for professional development of scientists and engineers in the Middle East, including the Gulf region and North Africa. The need for such development persists, despite the strong commitment of regional governments to improving undergraduate education and to building research capabilities in institutions of higher learning. Until recently, attracting highly motivated academic staff to advance research agendas and to make significant contributions to GDP growth were not among the top priorities. But, thanks to the foresight of regional leaders, higher education in this part of the world is starting to change. However, the fact remains that highly skilled scientists and engineers in the region who are dedicated to research, often must seek work abroad in academic and research institutions in order to develop themselves professionally.
Well defined and focused high quality scientific/technical meetings dedicated to contacts between the academics and researchers in regional institutions of higher learning and their counterparts abroad are scarce. The purpose of starting a biannual international conference ideally to be rotated around the Middle East, Gulf and North African region countries was and still is to meet this need and to provide a well structured platform to boost research activity and productivity in the region as well as providing a point of contact and networking. Such a conference can serve as a focal point for the gathering of scientists and engineers who hail from this region and who are working abroad in Europe, North America and other industrialized parts of the world. Thermal Engineering was selected as an umbrella title for the Conference series because of its encompassing meaning and because this research area is of great importance to the region. Topics related to environment, energy, petroleum, and construction are obvious examples of thermal engineering applications which are crucial to the economic development of the region.
At the time the decision was made to hold the first Conference on Thermal Engineering in Beirut from 31 May to 4 June in 2004, Lebanon was poised to emerge from its long period of arrested development. The country had come out of a long civil war and the long and arduous process of rebuilding Lebanon had started. Beirut had experienced an explosive growth and rebuilding activity during the decade preceding 2004 with billions of dollars of investment and had regained some of its past glory and glitter worthy of its nickname “Paris of the East” of the 1950’s and 1960’s before the civil war. It was felt that the opportunity to start this exercise in Beirut to be rotated later elsewhere could not be passed up.
The 1st International Conference on Thermal Engineering held under the patronage of his Excellency Emile Lahoud the President of Lebanon was successful beyond the best expectations of the organizers. The success of the conference could not have been achieved without the support of the Lebanese and the Canadian Governments. A large audience of scientists attended the meeting held in the Movenpick hotel on the Corniche. Selected peer reviewed papers appeared in January 2006 in a special issue of the Journal of Applied Mechanics (Transactions of ASME – American Society of Mechanical Engineers) dedicated to ICTEA and edited by Dennis Siginer. The next ICTEA duplicated and even eclipsed the success of the 1st ICTEA. It was held in the United Arab Emirates at the Hilton, Al Ain on January 3-6, 2006 under the high patronage of his Excellency Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan with support of the UAE University. The 3rd ICTEA was held with an even larger attendance in Amman, Jordan at the Le Royale Hotel in the heart of Amman under the patronage of the Prime Minister of Jordan, his Excellency, Dr. Ma’roof al Bakheit. The growing success of the conference series and the rapid recognition it gained and continues to gain is quite gratifying to its organizers and benefactors. After another successful ICTEA meeting in January 2009 at The Petroleum Institute the Conference series is solidly established as a preferred venue of scientific/technical exchange in the Middle East and the Arab World at large with a very substantial and growing attendance/participation record.
Dr. Dennis Siginer
PI Assistant Provost and Chair of Arts and Sciences Program
