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UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
Cooking up a storm:
Adding Value To
South Africa’s Process
Industries
The Department of Chemical Engineering is recognised locally
and internationally as the leading academic department of its
kind in Africa. It has cemented a reputation for unique research
programmes and projects that meet the challenges posed by a
highly developed industrialised era.
The goal is for South Africa to supply 25% of the future global fuel-
cell market with novel, locally developed and fabricated platinum-
group metal catalysts by 2020.
U
CT’s Department of Chemical Engineering helps to keep South Africa at the
forefront of emerging technologies in various important economic sectors
such as mining, water management, bioenergy and renewable energy, greenhouse
gas emission reductions and pharmaceutical developments regarding insulin and
antiretroviral medication.
Research in the department has grown significantly over the last ten years, with
postgraduate numbers doubling from 92 in 2002 to 185 in 2012. The department hosts
four university-accredited research groupings: the Crystallization and Precipitation
Research Unit and the Centres for Bioprocess Engineering Research, Catalysis Research
and Minerals Processing Research. There are also two DST/NRF SARChI Chairs
(Bioprocess Engineering and Minerals Beneficiation), the DST/NRF Centre of Excellence
in Catalysis, and the DST Competence Centre in Hydrogen and Fuel Cells, as well as one
of the university’s Signature Research Themes in Minerals to Metals.
The DST/NRF Centre of Excellence in Catalysis (c*change) is a virtual research
programme of national scope and significance, with multidisciplinary participants
from ten higher-education institutions. Its core focus is the field of catalysis science
– a critical industrial technology underpinning the South African economy. This
includes the Fischer-Tropsch process, that converts coal and natural gas to liquid
fuels, which currently provides 40% of South Africa’s liquid-fuels requirements. In