Join the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Armour College of Engineering for a spring seminar on Wednesday February 14 from 3:15–4:30 p.m. in Perlstein Hall Auditorium. The seminar, titled “Particles Are Your Problem,” will feature Ben Freireich, technical director, PSRI

Billions of pounds of bulk solids are processed and handled every year by the U.S. process industries, yet most undergraduate chemical engineers have never had a lecture, let alone a course, in solids processing. Hence, plants and products suffer with lost production, inability to achieve design production rates, off grade or off specification products. During this seminar, we will take a look at the fun and exciting world of solids processing. Specifically, we will look at some of the more common particle-based technologies examining both the important role they play in society today along with the associated technical challenges.

Freireich is the technical director at Particulate Solid Research, Inc. (PSRI) and was previously a research scientist in engineering sciences at The Dow Chemical Company in the Solids Processing Lab. He obtained his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2010 from Purdue University studying manufacturing processes involving solid materials (particles, powders, etc.).

At PSRI Freireich guides member and contract research efforts executed by the technical staff. PSRI is a consortium-based research company with member companies across the globe that applies and generates fundamental research in the area particle technology with focus on fluidized systems. At Dow he was involved in many products and processes, with expertise on powder flowability, fluidization, size enlargement, attrition, etc.

Freireich has more than 20 publications and 250 citations, sits on the Executive Committee of the AIChE Particle Technology Forum, is the chair of ASTM D18.24 sub-committee on Characterization of Bulk Solids and Powders, and was recently named one of AIChE’s 35 under 35 for 2017. He lives in Chicago and has four children.