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Nordic Rheology Conference 2007The 16th Nordic Rheology (Society) Conference of 2007 was held between the dates of 13th to 15th June in Stavanger, Norway, the central point of the Norwegian oil industry. This year, hosted in Statoil’s head office, the conference represented somewhat of a landmark in the Society’s history – it was the first time the conference was hosted in industry. The excellent quality of the lecture halls and lunch buffet at Statoil will be as much remembered by the delegates as the high quality of the rest of the conference. This year the conference attracted 72 delegates, some 29 presentations and 12 posters, not to mention three internationally recognized guest speakers. The special theme of this year’s conference was Emulsions and Suspensions, with contributions from people working with drilling fluids, foods, cement, polymers, pharmaceuticals, paint, pulp etc. Truly the NRS annual conference is a forum for Rheologists working in many different fields.
Invited speakers The conference was opened by the first plenary lecture given by Professor Gareth H. McKinley on the topic of “Rheological Fingerprinting of Complex Fluids using Large Amplitude Oscillatory Shear (LAOS) Flow”. The lecture presented the delegates with an excellent overview of the possibilities with rheological fingerprinting for distinguishing complex fluids from one another. In addition, the audience was also fascinated by the work done at MIT on the rheology of snail slime. University of Stavanger
The session continued with a second keynote lecture given by Dr. Richard Jachnik of Baker Hughes Drilling Fluids who treated the audience to an interesting tour through some of the problems with the current rheometers used in the oil industry. The third keynote lecture, given by Dr. Ahmadi Tehrani of MI Swaco, started after a refreshing coffee break. The talk continued the main topic of the rheology course and presented the delegates with an even deeper insight into the performance areas where fluid rheology of drilling fluids plays a dominant role. Dr. Peter Fischer of ETH in Zurich then took us into the realm of protein-stabilized interfaces and their effect on the deformation behaviour of emulsion drops, before the parallel sessions were launched. This year, the rest of the morning session of the first day were filled with submitted presentations that focused on either Materials with high Deborah numbers or Polymers and Food Applications. The afternoon session focused on Instrumentation and Dr. Joerg Laeuger of Anton Paar GmbH provided some useful insights on the validation of empirical rules for a standard polymer solution.
Exotic plants and palm trees At the end of the dinner, the attention of the delegates was called for by the president of the NRS, Niall W. Young of Danisco A/S. In his annual speech the president of the NRS emphasized the importance of the strong interaction with industry in this year’s conference. No Carl Klason or Young Rheologists Award was made by the Society this year. The delegates were therefore encouraged to nominate candidates for next year’s conference through the Society’s website . Niall then rounded of the dinner with a Swedish joke, in other words by informing the delegates that the best way to model the rheological behaviour of drilling fluids is to use the “mud-ified” Herschel-Bulkley model... The final day started with a session on fundamental research and industrial applications that involved CFD simulations, ultrasound Doppler based velocimetry and in-line rheometry, PIV and texture profile analysis, temperature control measurements etc. This session showed that new techniques and methods are now getting more and attention, also from industry and that they may be an interesting complementary to the conventional viscometry and oscillatory tests.
Exhibition The afternoon session started with the poster session and the Annual Meeting of the Nordic Rheology Society. Among the topics treated was next year’s election of a new board for the Society, followed by an interesting open discussion about further expansion of the Society. With the business completed the rest of the afternoon session focused on static and dynamic sagging, sedimentation etc. problems in drilling fluids, problems that we all essentially face in our particular applications. The conference organizers were then duly thanked for their hard work and efforts in organizing a successful conference.
Best
presentation The final word was given to the delegates in the afternoon in the form of an invitation to meet up once again in August next year. The Nordic Rheology Society Annual Conference 2008 will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark between the dates of August 27-29. Further details will be posted on the NRS website throughout the coming year.
Johan
Wiklund, PhD |
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