John O’Connell, who has been part of the community since the beginning, wrote a history of the PPEPPD conferences, published in 2016. But here’s a capsule history of PPEPPD.
Origins
The origin of the PPEPPD Conferences can be traced to the recognition during the early 1970’s that a severe communication gap existed between fundamental and applied aspects of product and process design, namely in the area of properties and phase equilibrium.
The first meeting —supported by the US Engineering Foundation and National Science Foundation— was convened to address this issue. Truman Storvick and Stanley Sandler — both professors of chemical engineering in the USA — organized this first conference. It was held at Asilomar, USA, in January, 1977. Only 3 of the more than 100 participants were not from the USA.
The contributions and discussions produced at Asilomar were published by the American Chemical Society (T.S. Storvick and S.I. Sandler, “Phase Equilibria and Fluid Properties in the Chemical Industry,” ACS Symp. Ser. 60, Washington, D.C., 1977, 537 pp). The volume reveals the depth and breadth of the material covered.
The mood of enthusiasm and collaboration that was established, and the mutual respect of the researchers who participated was also notable. In this spirit, the second conference, organized by Professors Helmut Knapp and Stanley Sandler and the German chemical engineering society (DECHEMA), was held in Berlin (March, 1980).
Professor Knapp had a few years earlier initiated a series of informal “Seminars on Applied Thermodynamics,” still held annually in Europe. Berlin was the natural choice for the second conference.
The Berlin conference was highly successful, to a large extent because of the balance in terms of geography (Europe/North America/Asia) and profession (industry/academia) of the participants.
The proceedings were published by DECHEMA (DECHEMA, “Phase Equilibria and Fluid Properties in the Chemical Industry,” EFCE Publications Series No. 11, Frankfurt, 1980, 1012 pp).
It was concluded at that time that future conferences should have a three-year periodicity, with locations alternating between North America and Europe. The Chairs for the next two conferences, John O’Connell (U. of Florida, USA, 1983) and Aage Fredenslund (The Technical University of Denmark, 1986) worked together.
The 3rd conference was held in Callaway Gardens, Georgia, USA, in April 1983. Just over half the 196 participants came from universities and the rest were from industry and governmental agencies.
At Callaway Gardens, the conference found a format that was especially suitable for the area of Fluid Properties and Phase Equilibria for Chemical Process Design, an area characterized by its large degree of international collaboration and openness, rather than competition and secrecy.
The main elements of the format were:
- relatively few, but longer, contributions instead of many, shorter papers;
- no parallel sessions;
- poster-sessions with a limited number of contributions preceded by well-prepared introductions from rapporteurs;
- sessions scheduled for the mornings and evenings, with afternoons free for unscheduled, individual interactions;
- publication (after review) of the proceedings in a peer reviewed journal – Fluid Phase Equilibria” (Volume 13 with 394 pp and 14 with 416 pp, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1983);
- participation, with financial support, of some “young research workers” in the field;
- housing, meals and meetings at one location only.
The motivation and spirit of these first PPEPPD conferences have been kept ever since even as the series has gone global. The list of conferences to date:
1977: Asilomar, USA.
1980: Berlin, Germany
1983: Callaway Gardens, USA
1986: Elsinore, Denmark
1989: Banff, Canada
1992: Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
1995: Aspen, USA
1998: Nordwijkerhout, Netherlands
2001: Kurashiki, Japan
2004: Snowbird, USA
2007: Hersonissos, Greece
2010: Suzhou, China
2013: Iguazu, Argentina/Brazil
2016: Porto, Portugal
2019: Vancouver, Canada
2023: Tarragona, Spain