IChemE conference at CHEMUK 2025

IChemE’s goal is to help our members to engineer a sustainable world. To that end, we must show our members where and how they can use their skills to make a difference.

Our report, Engineering A Sustainable World – the Chemical Engineering Challenge, sets out which Sustainable Development Goals chemical engineers are best placed to help achieve. We identify the industry sectors, the enablers, and the cross-cutting issues that drive the change.

Our lineup of speakers at ChemUK 2025 will bring this vision to life, with examples of how chemical engineers are already shaping a sustainable future. We will discuss some of the digital tools they are using to make this change, and how the training for chemical engineers needs to adapt to ensure we have the right skills to drive this change.

Skills session: The Skills Foundation

• Speaker: Dr. Kate Barclay OBE FIChemE
• Time: Wednesday 21 May, 11-11:15

Building a strong foundation of skills and continuous education is key to driving innovation and sustainability in the chemical engineering industry. By nurturing new talent and fostering a culture of lifelong learning, we can empower engineers to tackle complex challenges and shape the future of global processes

Technical session: The AI Transformation

Rapidly evolving digital technologies, including AI, are transforming the process industries. IChemE will share some leading examples, with case studies from recent winners of the IChemE Awards and the Young Engineers Awards for Innovation and Sustainability.

• Early Careers session: EvoPhase HARPPP: AI-Driven Optimisation of Industrial Processes – 2024 IChemE Young Engineers of the Year
• Speakers: Roberto Hart-Villamil (Modelling and Simulation Engineer, major defence contractor) and Andrei Leonard Nicusan (CTO and Founder of EvoPhase)
• Time: Wednesday 21 May, 11:15 – 11:35

Optimising designs for industrial equipment — such as wind turbines, stirred tank reactors, or fluidised beds — is traditionally a costly, months or years-long venture that often yields only marginal improvements over decades-old designs. At the University of Birmingham, early career researchers developed an autonomous, AI-driven geometric optimisation engine to reduce energy consumption, minimise waste, and enhance overall efficiency in industrial processes. By enabling the generation and simulation-based testing of thousands of diverse designs in just days, this technology has delivered significant performance improvements across five industrial sectors—from a 10-fold energy reduction in a Unilever mixer to a 7-fold increase in wind turbine efficiency.

• Industry Case study 1: Using AI to optimize fuels additives treatment
• Speaker: John Hung, Global Category Director for Operations Supply and Projects, BP
• Time: Wednesday 21 May, 11:35 – 11:55

BP is using artificial intelligence and advanced non-linear predictive models for real-time monitoring and control of a fuels additives treatment process.  This improved the safety, efficiency and reliability of the process, helping to select the optimum additives, detect issues early, and adjusting the additive mixture in real time to adjust for changing fuels quality and operational parameters.

It enabled BP to comply with stringent industrial regulations, reduce quality give-aways and avoid unplanned shutdown. It also helped make the process more efficient by reducing chemical and energy consumption, shrinking the carbon footprint and improving performance. More importantly, it increased the processing of opportunity crudes by removing refinery constraints. In a nutshell, using digital tools including AI made the process more sustainable and safer while reducing the carbon footprints and costs.

The project was the winner of the Process Automation and Digitalisation Award at the 2024 IChemE Global Awards

• Industry Case study 2: Combining Deep Knowledge with AI in Advanced Process Operations
• Speaker: Prof. Dr. Costas Pantelides FIChemE FREng
• Time: Wednesday 21 May, 11:55 – 12:15

Sophisticated decision support and control systems which make use of deep process knowledge, often developed during the plant design stage, open a range of new possibilities in process operations. In this talk, we briefly review recent industrial experience in this area, and the associated benefits in terms of higher product quality, enhanced profitability and increased sustainability. We also examine some of the specific ways in which new AI-based technologies can be combined with established methodologies in process modelling and mathematics to deliver additional functionality and benefits.

The speaker is also presenting a keynote at the Advances in the Digitalisation of the Process Industries conference on 16-17 October 2025 in Manchester

Digital tools Roundtable Discussion

What is the potential for digital tools in the process industries? How might we use AI to monitor and help control processes? Can AI help in the creative process?

Time: Wednesday 21 May, 12:15 – 13:00

Participants:

• Kate Barclay OBE FIChemE
• Roberto Hart-Villamil, Major Defence Contractor
• Andrei Leonard Nicusan, EvoPhase
• John Hung, BP
• Prof. Dr. Costas Pantelides FIChemE FREng