Chapman’s influential fluid theory turns 20
Rice professor attends European conference in honor of SAFT

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

It’s been 20 years since Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Professor Walter Chapman first described statistical associating fluid theory (SAFT), and Chapman’s idea is now used worldwide.

	WALTER CHAPMAN

Chapman had the honor of attending the SAFT 2010 conference in September in Barcelona, Spain. The conference was dedicated entirely to discussions about SAFT, which is one of the most widely applied equations of state in the chemical industry and academia today.

“SAFT predicts the properties of fluids like water, alcohols, solvents and polymers based on knowledge of the intermolecular forces between molecules,” Chapman said.

Specifically, SAFT lets researchers and engineers calculate macroscopic properties — like the temperature and pressure at which a tank full of liquid will change from one liquid phase to another — based solely on the molecular forces between molecules.

Chapman said speakers at the conference explained how SAFT is being used in the design of new chemical plants, how the theory is being extended and how SAFT is being used to develop new processes for carbon dioxide capture, biofuels production and more.

Chapman said his research group at Rice is still actively involved in advancing SAFT. For example, they are working with Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico to develop an open-source software package that will allow researchers in industry and academic labs to quickly and easily apply the theory to fluids that contain nanoparticles, copolymers and solvents.