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.