Autumn Programme Shaping Up

Our programme of events and lectures for the later half of 2010 is coming together very nicely mainly due to the efforts of our secretary Ian Carson.

Magritte and Music
We kick off our programme with a guided tour in English of the new Magritte Museum in central Brussels on the morning of Saturday September 18th. This will be followed by a short stroll over the road to lunch at the very fine restaurant at the top of the Musical Instrument Museum. The restaurant enjoys magnificent views over Brussels.

Surfactants
On the evening of Tuesday September 28th our 2010-11 lecture programme is initiated by Dr. David Ross of Huntsman Chemicals based in Everberg on the old ICI site. He will talk about polymeric dispersants and surfactants in the excellent Swoosh Lounge at BSB.

Biorefineries
Our attention turns to biotechnology, biofuels and beyond on the evening of Wednesday 27th October when we will welcome Prof Franck Dumeignil of the University of Lille. Prof. Dumeignil is the main coordinator for a major new €37 million European Commission FP7 research project on the ‘biorefinery’ concept: EUBIOREF. This event will be held in the Brel theatre at BSB.

The idea of a biorefinery is to mimic a conventional oil refinery in terms of the use of a number of biomass feedstocks to produce a spectrum of useful fuel and chemical products. But a biorefinery will use highly efficient processes producing minimal environmental impact and, of course, only consuming renewable raw materials.

Plasma tech
In mid November Dr Laurent Denis from the University of Mons will be talking to us about plasma technologies and thin film fabrication and characterisation. Details of this event are close to final confirmation and we anticipate the event being held in the Swoosh Lounge at BSB.

IYC 2011
Don’t forget 2011 is International Year of Chemistry (IYC2011). We hope our first IYC event will be a Café Chimique on Climate Change. Our Café Chimique will mimic the Café Scientifique format and we hope to stimulate a debate amongst the audience and the speakers. We will be inviting speakers with differing views on the topic who will present and then debate the issue with interventions welcome from the ‘floor’. The probable venue for this first RSC Belgium Café Chimique will be the Swoosh Lounge at BSB.


More details on all these events to follow during the summer.