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).