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Last night I saw Ajay Bhatt on TV for the first time. He's Intel's latest "rock star" in their "Sponsors of Tomorrow" marketing campaign.

You can see Bhatt's rock idol video here. He is an Intel fellow and the co-inventor of USB, today's standard for connecting devices to computers.

Bhatt is a good sport in playing what must have been an uncomfortable video role. But this send up of modern fan adulation does more than bring attention to one of Intel's many stellar engineers.

Intel's rock star video serves as a reminder that real people make the things that make the world a little better. And while we can't elevate every engineer--or engineering team--to the star status they deserve for their innovations, we can at least share the names of the ones we know of.

Announcing the Process Industry's Engineers Star Quest
So here's your chance to join in the nomination of our own process industry rock stars. You can nominate historical figures or contemporaries. To help get you started, here are some individuals who might qualify for star status:

Joseph Priestly (1733 – 1804): Powder and Bulk dot com publisher Joe Taylor nominated Joseph Priestly because "he's the guy who figured out oxygen and gases."

Priestly actually received a rock star's welcome when he emigrated from England to the United States in 1794. But the adulation was more for his outspoken support of the new republic than his discovery of oxygen.

According to the Chemical Heritage website, Priestly had been encouraged by Benjamin Franklin, when the later was in London, to complete his first scientific work, The History of Electricity (1767). Priestly went on to publish more than 150 works. In addition to his scientific research he was a noted English theologian, natural philosopher, educator, and political theorist.

While Priestly is credited with the discovery of oxygen (he called it "dephlogisticated air"), Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Antoine Lavoisier also hold claim to the discovery. Priestly wrote six volumes on Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air.

In Birmingham, England Priestly joined the Lunar Society, a group of manufacturers, inventors, and natural philosophers who met monthly to discuss their work. The group included manufacturer Matthew Boulton, chemist and geologist James Keir, inventor and engineer James Watt, and botanist, chemist, and geologist William Withering.

Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC): Going even further back in history, my top choice for engineering rock star is Archimedes whose breakthrough screw design is still used in bulk material handling. It's the basis for the screw feeder, by far the most commonly used volumetric or gravimetric feeder found today. You can find the Archimedes screw pumping and metering liquids and bulk solids in virtually every process industry.

Archimedes wrote the earliest known explanation of the principle involved in the lever. He is said to have remarked, "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth."

Archimedes designed block-and-tackle pulley systems, allowing sailors to use the principle of leverage to lift objects that would otherwise have been too heavy to move. He is also credited with improving the power and accuracy of the catapult. During the First Punic War he invented the first odometer. As a cart outfitted with the odometer moved forward, a gear mechanism dropped a ball into a container upon each mile traveled.

Archimedes was born, lived and died in the Greek city-state of Syracuse, in Sicily. Like all the early innovators, he was a generalist and is known as a Greek mathematician, physicist, inventor, and astronomer. And he was most definitely an engineer. "His name is inextricably associated with the genesis of engineering in ancient Greece," according to this profile on the website of the Technology Museum & Science Center in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Gordon E. Moore (1929 - ): Gordon E. Moore didn't invent the computer, and he can't take full credit for the microprocessor, though he and Intel co-founder Robert Noyce certainly gave it a hand. Over the years, his Intel engineers have taken a commanding lead in development of the computer chip that has become the backbone of countless products and the transformer of nearly every business and industry.

The thing that makes Moore stand out from all the others is his early recognition of just how big this chip revolution would be. In 1965, his Moore's Law predicted the trajectory of how many transistors could be placed on a computer chip. The time frame has stretched from a year, to 18 months to two years as the size and complexity of the chips have grown, but the law has held for more than 40 years. Each new generation of chips has doubled the computing power of the previous chips. As a result computing costs have been cut in half every one to two years, while speed and computational capacity have grown exponentially.

The impact of the microprocessor on the process industries cannot be overstated. Many modern processes simply would not be possible without today's digital controls and sensors. In the bulk material handing sector, just to take one example, highly accurate loss-in-weight and weigh belt feeders wouldn't be so accurate without their microprocessor controls. Digital weighing technology simply isn't possible without their onboard microprocessors.

Moore earned a bachelor's in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1950 and a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1954. For those who might say he's a chemist or a business manager, not an engineer, it should be noted that Moore is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Engineers. He serves on the board of trustees of the California Institute of Technology and received the National Medal of Technology in 1990 and the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 2002.

Who Are Your Engineering Stars?
So now it's your chance to nominate our process industry rock stars. They may be historical figures whose work we continue to build upon today. Or you may want to nominate a contemporary like Ajay Bhatt whose work is moving us toward tomorrow. Post your comment here, or send an email to don@powderandbulk.com with the subject line Engineering Stars.

Don Dunnington
Blog moderator

Helping industry produce better product, faster, and at lower cost has been a driving force for many of the most innovative process equipment companies. Today process automation remains the chief tool available to process industries seeking to reduce costs and improve product quality.

To help processors capture greater material cost savings while assuring product quality, the K-Tron Process Group recently unveiled its improved Feed Smart Deluxe Recipe Optimizer, a Microsoft Excel workbook (available as a free download) that helps processors calculate the potential savings hidden in their current process recipes.

The expanded and enhanced FeedSmart Deluxe adds a new level of functionality for processors wishing to minimize ingredient costs, evaluate options, and make the best possible decision when it comes time to purchase a new feeding system. The program lets you quickly compute the lowest possible recipe cost for every blend, formulation or compound, plus you can calculate additional savings that result from improved feeder accuracy. 

A Seminar Just for Pharmaceutical Process Engineers
Like all manufacturers, the search for greater productivity in the pharmaceutical sector has been driven largely by global competition and economic conditions. But their drive for process innovation may be further intensified by political pressure in many countries to do something to reduce mounting health care costs across the board.

In response to the industry’s growing interest in process improvement, a group of process equipment manufacturers have been sponsoring free seminars in for process engineers in the pharmaceutical industry. “Innovations in Pharmaceutical Processing” is produced by the K-Tron Process Group in collaboration with Leistritz, Howorth Air Technology, Inc, Hosokawa Micron Powder Systems, and Quadro Engineering Corp.

Seminars have been held in major pharmaceutical processing regions around the world. I recently attended one in King of Prussia, near Philadelphia, PA. Presentations covered key topics of design in pharmaceutical processing, such as containment, continuous processing using twin screw extrusion, pneumatic conveying, milling, sieving, screening and size reduction, continuous blending, active freeze drying of products and ingredients, and feeding options for a variety of applications.

Processing Seminar Travels to California
The next stop for the pharmaceutical seminars is California--September 22, 2009, in Santa Ana, CA and September 24, 2009, in San Francisco. The seminar offers pharmaceutical processors detailed process and analytical information about important  topics and trends in the industry.

The seminar organizers have put together an objective technical overview on how to improve current operations and take advantage of new technologies, such as lubricant feeding of the modern tablet press illustrated above. You can register online for the seminar, which has been developed to meet the information needs of scientists, engineers, production and manufacturing personnel, researchers, formulation scientists, product development and process transfer personnel.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator