James
R. Fair, PhD
John J.
McKetta Centennial Energy Chair Emeritus in Engineering
| Office: |
CPE 3.404 |
Mailing Address: |
| Phone: |
(512) 471-3689 |
The University of Texas at Austin |
| Fax: |
-- |
Deptartment of Chemical Engineering |
| Email: |
fair@che.utexas.edu |
1 University Station C0400 |
| UT Mail: |
C0400 |
Austin, TX 78712-0231 |
Educational Qualifications:
Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin (1955)
AIChE: Council (1965), Fellow (1971), William H. Walker
Award (1973), Chemical Engineering Practice Award (1975),
Founders Award (1976), Institute Lecturer Award (1979),
and Eminent Chemical Engineer (1983)
Personal Achievement Award, Chemical Engineering (1968)
National Academy of Engineering (1974)
UT Distinguished Graduate (1976)
UT College of Engineering: Faculty Award (1984), and Joe
J. King Professional Engineering Achievement Award (1987)
Malcolm Pruitt Award, Council for Chemical Research (1991)
Focus:
Process design and development, separation processes,
distillation
Research:
Separation processes are vital for isolating and purifying
products for marketing-but are also crucial to the need
for removing toxic and hazardous substances from fluid
streams emitted to the environment. Separations equipment
represents a very large portion of the total capital
investment in process plant facilities and, as was forcibly
demonstrated in the mid 1970s, such equipment is a large
consumer of energy.
-
The UT Separations Research Program involves over
60 graduate students, seven faculty, several full-time
research personnel, and a full complement of
postdoctoral
fellows and visiting scientists. It is supported
by over 30 companies and a number of other
funding agencies. In addition to directing the
program, my
efforts focus on research in fluid-fluid and
fluid-solid mass transfer as applied to absorption,
adsorption,
distillation, extraction and stripping. A unique
aspect of this work is the coupling of fundamental,
mechanistic models to experimental results
obtained at scales ranging from bench-top to semi-works
plant.
The larger facilities for this work are located
at the Balcones Research Center. The results of
our
research are used by our industrial sponsors
in the analysis and design of their process plant
facilities.
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Since the mass transfer processes we study involve
phase contacting and phase equilibrium, components
of the research include work in fluid mechanics and
solution thermodynamics. Also, the transfer of heat
between phases leads to work in direct contact t heat
transfer. Some of our most recent endeavors include
the development of an expert system, using artificial
intelligence methodology, for selecting and optimizing
the sequence of separation operations needed for process
flowsheeting. Our group's rese arch topics include:
prediction of distillation tray efficiency based on
fluid contacting mechanisms; kinetics of adsorbent
regeneration using steam and hot inert gas; effect
of water vapor on the rate and equilibrium of organic
vapor adsorption; catalytic c distillation for the
production of oxygenates; axial dispersion of the phases
in countercurrent gas-liquid contacting using structured
packing; separation system synthesis; and pure liquid
phase mass transfer in high efficiency packings.
Selected Publications
- "Separation System Synthesis: A Knowledge-Based Approach.
II. Gas/Vapor Mixtures, " Ind. Eng. Chem. Research
31:1679 (1992), with S. D. Barnicki.
- "
Point Efficiencies on Sieve Trays," AIChE Journal
37:1261 (1991) (with J. L. Bravo and M. Biddulph)
- "
Adsorptive Drying of Hydrocarbon Liquids," Ind.
Eng. Chem. Research 30:177 (1991) (with S. Joshi)
- "
Direct Contact Gas-Liquid Heat Exchange for Energy Recovery," Trans.
ASME/ J. Solar Energy Eng. 112:216 (1990)
- "
Performance of a large-Scale Packed Liquid-Liquid Extractor," Ind.
Eng. Chem. Research 29:1901 (1990) (with B.
Reeves and A. F. Sei bert)
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