Erden Sizgek

Short Biography
Dr. Sizgek (BSc., MSc. (Istanbul Technical University, Turkey) and PhD. (UNSW, Australia) in Chemical Engineering), is a Chemical Engineer with over 25 years of professional experience in project, process, design, R&D engineering and management positions in petrochemical, polymer, fertiliser and glass industries in Turkey, Czechoslovakia, Saudi Arabia and Australia including the Institute of Materials Engineering of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) in Principal Research Scientist position. He is one of the two technology developers of a nuclear waste treatment technology from concept to full scale mock-up plant for producing a synroc waste form for immobilisation of Australian legacy waste arising from Mo-99 medical radioisotope production process. He currently holds Senior Research Scientist position at Material Science and Engineering Division of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

Expertise

• Applied research and technology development in the nuclear waste and materials processing technologies including process development, process design & scaling up and plant deployment. Development and scaling up of inorganic ion-exchanger materials for advanced nuclear fuel cycles.
• Spray drying, atomisation, fluidisation, powder processing, drying, calcination and chemical reactor technologies.
• Microwave assisted chemical processing technologies: Microwave heated impregnation, drying and fluidised bed calcining. Design and construction of microwave processing systems.
• Sol-gel science and technology: Processing of colloidal dispersions, colloid chemistry, microemulsions, microsphere production technologies, porous materials, energetic sol gel materials.

Career Highlights & Achievements:

• The significance of his achievements was recognised by three media publications released by ANSTO. He has been nominated by ANSTO for 2006 Awards of Excellence in Chemical Engineering of The Institution of Engineers Australia.
• He has been elected as a Fellow of The Institution of Engineers Australia in September 2006.
• He co-deployed construction of a full scale mock up plant for immobilisation of ANSTO Mo-99 legacy waste, which is based on the technologies he co-developed with Dr. Devlet Sizgek (2006).
• Co-inventor (with Dr. Devlet Sizgek) of a patent for heating fluidised beds with microwave energy up to 1000°C (2004).
• He succeeded integrating microwave heating with a commercially available processing technology by designing and building probably world's first microwave-heated ploughshare type mixer-drier on plant scale in 2003.
• He designed and constructed Australia's largest sol-gel processing facility at ANSTO to produce synroc ceramic precursor powders on the basis of a unique chemical processing flowsheet he developed.

ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA SYDNEY DIVISION FELLOWS’ LUNCHEON

The luncheon was attended by 140 Fellows and their guests.Andrew Humpherson MP hosted the luncheon as he has kindly done for several years. Barry Grear AO, President Elect, World Federation of Engineering Organisations, was the guest speaker for the recent Fellows’ Luncheon at Parliament House.
Few members are elevated to the grade of Fellow each year. It was very pleasing to see 17 members including 2 women, recognised by Amal Hanna Sydney Division President, in her last official presidential engagement. The new Fellows introduced by Amal were: David Boverman, Gregory Bowyer, Lawrence Cullen, Ian Donaldson, George Edwards, Noel Godfrey, Warren Green, Strutidevi Kelkar, Kwok Chuen Lau, Nicholas Lawther, Peter Masters, Alexander Nielsen, Andrew Pau, Murray Simpson, Dr Erden Sizgek, Veronica Thomas and Richard Woods.

Devlet Sizgek

Short Biography
Dr Sizgek (BSc. (Istanbul Technical University, Turkey), MSc. (Bogazici University-Istanbul, Turkey) and PhD. (UMIST- UK) in Chem. Eng.), is a Chemical Engineer with over 25 years of experience in process development, chemical process design & operations,  material science & engineering and computational fluid dynamics. After completing her PhD, she spent 2.5 years at the University of New South Wales as a post doctoral fellow and about one year at Queensland Alumina Ltd. as strategic development engineer before joining (Principal Research Scientist) Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation in 1994.

Expertise

• Nuclear waste processing, drying technologies, powder processing, microwave heated chemical processing technologies, fluidised bed calcining in particular application of nuclear waste treatment.
• CFD applications including spray drying and heat transfer analysis of nuclear waste stores and repositories. 
• Applied research and technology development in the nuclear waste treatment and ion-exchanger technology fields. 
• Her expertise includes engineering and process development of metal alkoxide nano-structured mesoporous granular materials for the separation of radioisotopes and applications in nuclear fuel cycle.

Career Highlights & Achievements

• Group leader for successful demonstration of integration of immobilisation processing steps through inactive mockup trials (2005-2006).
• Project leader for site legacy waste immobilisation project, leading into an implementation project with the approval of Capital Equipment Request (2001-2004).
• She is one of the two developers of a nuclear waste treatment technology from concept to full scale mock-up plant for producing a targeted synroc waste form for immobilisation of Australian waste arising from Mo-99 medical radioisotope production process.
• She co-deployed construction of a full scale mock up plant for immobilisation of ANSTO Mo-99 legacy waste, which is based on the technologies she co-developed with Dr. Erden Sizgek (2006).
• The significance of her achievements was recognised by three media publications released by ANSTO.
• Co-inventor (with Dr Erden Sizgek) of the patent for heating fluidised beds with microwave energy up to 1000°C (2004).