Graeme White

Fundamental interest in fluids, flow visualisation, modelling fluid flow for pure liquids and mixtures of liquids/solids and liquid/liquid systems. Two main applications of this work are in a) Offshore Floating Production Systems and b) Crystallisation in the Pharmaceutical Industry. For the offshore oil and gas sector, I am particularly interested in the impact the motion of the support vessel has on processing equipment used to separate gas, oil and water, and in the performance of packed column and distillation columns. My lab has a unique series of columns which we can oscillate, simulating the motion of a platform. Our work is directly supported by the industry. For crystalisation, the research interest is in mixing inside batch stirred tank crystallisers, measuring the velocity profile within the stirred tank during the initial phases as crystals are formed. Computational Fluid Dynamics models, typically Large Eddy Simulations, provide valuable insight into the flow patterns inside the batch tanks. We are especially keen to model industrial scale systems and provide the necessary validation for CFD codes.

Graeme White is a chartered Chemical Engineer, and a professorial fellow in the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences at Heriot-Watt University. He has held roles of Head of Teaching and Academic Head of Department and latterly head of the Multiphase Research Group within the Institute. His teaching experience spans across all years of the BEng/MEng programmes from material balances in year 1 to fluid mechanics, spread sheets in year 2, gas absorption, multiphase distillation in year 3, process design software tools, numerical modelling and offshore engineering in the final years. For research, Professor White started in looking in applications of fluid sloshing to the performance of oil and gas processing equipment used on board floating production platforms During this work, he developed interests in computational fluid dynamics and the deposition of solids inside production separators. Using this experience, he then applied his CFD experience to develop large eddy simulation models of batch stirred tank crystallisers as part of two major EPSRC-Industry projects for the pharmaceutical industry. His current research interests focuses on gas absorption columns for LNG in particular removing acid gases in columns on floating platforms.