Big Day Out at Dow

Glorious sunshine welcomed RSC Belgium members to the Dow Terneuzen plant on Saturday 21 May. They joined some 800 other interested members of the public who visited one of Europe's biggest chemical complexes during this open doors event.

Our visit started with registration at the plant entrance, including a fine bag of Dow goodies, before transfer to the Communications Centre and the opportunity to see a range of interactive exibits focusing on sustainable chemistry and applications in the home, work and play.


There was also a bouncy castle for the kids and some excellent Dutch coffee and top-notch buns.


RSC member and Dow employee Carolyn Ribes (below, right) was our guide for a specially arranged anglophone coach tour of the huge plant at 11:00. The Terneuzen complex is massive covering some 440 hectares - equivalent apparently to 650 football pitches. The site's polyurethane plant is the largest in Europe.


Ecological site
Carolyn described Dow Terneuzen as being "like a city" with its own fire and ambulance service, restaurants and many other services. But Dow also takes its ecological responsibilities very seriously too. Next to the site is a Natura 2000 site of special ecological importance and, uniquely in Europe, the site takes the waste water from the neighbouring town of Terneuzen, cleans it and uses it for process water before cleaning it again and passing it into the River Schelde - an excellent innovation that is a benchmark for future non-competitive water use.


After the coach tour some mebers of the RSC party retired to the Brasserie Westbeer overlooking the Schelde in Terneuzen for a harty lunch. Some members of the RSC group (including Carolyn and her husband Al - also a Dow employee) are pictured outside the restaurant with the Dow plant in the background.

Belgian chemical sites open up for IYC

During the weekend of May 21/22 a number of chemistry related facilities - research laboratories and manufacturing sites - in Belgium will be welcoming the public as part of the International Year of Chemistry 2011. And in this spirit RSC Members and Friends will be visiting the major Dow plant at Terneuzen in the Netherlands on Saturday May 21.

The sites in Belgium which are open during this weekend are coordinated by Essenscia - the Belgian chemical industry organisation. Details of the facilities that are open and arrangements to visit can be found on their website.
Information on the sites is split liguistically on the website with arrangements for chemical facilties in Wallonia in French and those open in Flanders in Flemish.

Dow, Terneuzen
Thanks to RSC Member and Dow employee Carolyn Ribes, the section has a particular opportunity to visit the Dow manufacturing site at Terneuzen, in the Netherlands (below) during their Open Day on Saturday May 21. Terneuzen is situated on the south bank of the Schelt, about 50 km north of Ghent and around 75 minutes drive from Brussels.


The site is constructed around three crackers which convert crude oil or LNG into basic chemical building blocks such as ethylene, propylene and butadiene which are then turned into plastics and basic chemicals. These go on to be transformed elsewhere into final products suich as packaging, electronics, toys, building materials, medicine or cosmetics.The site is particularly known for its sustainable operation, striving to improve energy efficiency, combat climate change and protect health and the environment.

The visit will include a gallery walk and exhibition about developments at Dow including their most innovative products and processes in the Communication Centre. There are many impressive developments moving from R&D labs into commercial use. This will be followed by a coach tour around the actual manufacturing site. Carolyn has arranged for the 11:30 bus tour to be in English. In total the visit should last two hours.

At the end of the visit RSC Belgium participants will head for lunch at the Westbeer restaurant on the waterfront at Terneuzen.

Res Metallica on Mendeleev

RSC Belgium treasurer, Rita Woodward, reports for RSC Belgium News on the Res Metallica Symposium on ‘The Periodic Table of Mendeleev’ that took place on Wednesday May 4 at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven(KULeuven).

In 2011, scientists from every corner of the world are celebrating the International Year of Chemistry. Moreover 2011 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the Nobel Prize in chemistry, awarded to Maria Sklodowska Curie for her groundbreaking discovery of radium and polonium.

So it was very appropriate that this year’s theme for the Res Metallica Symposium was the Periodic Table of Mendeleev. The meeting was held in the historic ‘Aula van ode Tweede Hoofdwet’ KU Leuven, Thermo-technisch Instituut on the Heverlee campus. This interdisciplinary symposium, introduced by chairman, Prof Patrick Wollants (Dept. of Materials Science, MTM) proved to be of great interest with over 500 people from academia and industry gathered together to hear about Mendeleev's periodic system and its relevance for material science.


A significant highlight of the symposium was when, amidst a shower of sparks, a life-sized 'Table of Mendeleev’ in an up-to-date 3-D format was unveiled. The table (see above - photo (c) K.U.Leuven - Rob Stevens) consists of a total of 112 boxes containing the elements displayed as simple substances in their pure elementary state.

Keynote speakers
Keynote speakers at the symposium included Prof. Peter Atkins of Oxford University (left) the well-known physical chemist and author of numerous popular science tomes such as 'The Elements 'and chemical textbooks such as his classical 'Physical Chemistry'. He offered participants a seat at the periodic table and explored mathematically and visually the underlying role of symmetry as applied to hydrogenic systems in one to four dimensions. Atkins' talk was followed by the unvieling of the new periodic table.

Following this excitement Prof Eric Scerri from UCLA in California gave a talk encapsulating the twists and turns of history to reveal the story and the significance of the Periodic Table.

Following on, Dr Jürgen Gieshoff of Umicore presented an industrial insight into the use of certain elements of the Periodic Table as catalysts, promoters and storage agents in the quest for ‘clean’ technologies for the automotive industry. Maurits Van Camp also from Umicore addressed issues involved in exploiting ‘the urban goldmine’ to achieve a sustainable future based on metals that can be almost indefinitely recycled and reused.

RSC President on Desert Island Discs

RSC President Prof David Phillips was the castaway on BBC Radio 4's long-running programme 'Desert Island Discs' on Sunday 1 May.

For those who missed it the programme is repeated on Friday 6 May at 10:00 (Belgian time) or can be accessed via the BBC iPlayer now via the Desert Island Discs website. Kirsty Young's guest's choices ranged from Vaughan-Williams and Mozart to the Red Army Choir and he reflected on his career and life experiences. Prof Phillips also included Tom Lehrer's rendition of 'The Elements' - a very chemical composition.


The section will be welcoming Prof Phillips (above) to Belgium in October. He will be giving us his reknowned demo lecture 'A Little Light Relief' on the evening of Thursday October 27 in Brussels (details tbc) and then participating in our event with Ghent University to present an International Chemical Landmark marking Kekule's research and teaching work in that city on 28 October.

Keith Price Cup presented

The Keith Price Cup was formally presented to Belgium's 2011 Top of the Bench (TOTB) competition winners - British School of Brussels (BSB) - at their end of term assembly on Friday 8 April.

The BSB team (pictured below with RSC Belgium chairman Prof. Bob Crichton) competed in the RSC UK final of TOTB at Imperial College London on Saturday 2 April.

The BSB team had a great time competing with teams from some of the very best schools in the UK and finished with a very respectable 'mid-table' score.


New name
The RSC Belgium TOTB Cup has been recently renamed as the Keith Price Cup in honour of our first Chairman and principal "founding father" of the section.

The cup (see below) will now be engraved with the name of the winning school each year. Our annual TOTB "Belgian eliminator" competition is open to all schools in Belgium and is usually organised during late November and early December. For more information, please contact Rita Woodward.

Keith Price

It was with great sadness that the section learnt of the death of Dr. Keith Price on Sunday 3rd April following a prolonged battle against cancer. Keith was the main inspiration for the founding of the RSC Belgium section, its first chairman and a stalwart member of the committee over 16 years.

Keith was an extremely active and voluble member of the section – in fact the only time he was ever lost for words was when he received his Long Service Award (see below) at the 2006 AGM. Keith was one of the very first members of an RSC international section to receive this honour. Keith is pictured with his wife Jackie and Section Chairman at the time Paul Gray.


Keith had a long and successful career in the direction of research with Monsanto in their Louvain-la-Neuve site, before retiring and forming his own consultancy business specialising in coordination and management of research projects, in particular for European framework programmes.

Keith and Jackie moved back to the UK from Belgium in 2006, but kept in contact with the section.

Our best wishes and heartfelt sympathy go out to Jackie, their two children, Gavin and Annelli, and the rest of Keith's family. The funeral will take place at Saint Mary’s Church, Ely, Cambridgeshire at midday on Tuesday 19 April. A number of section members plan to be there to pay their respects in person.

Prior to our learning of his death the section committee had already decided to honour Keith’s contribution to the section by renaming our Top of the Bench competition trophy, awarded annually to the school team that wins our national eliminator, the Keith Price Cup.

Donations to Addenbrooke’s
It was Keith’s express wish that, in lieu of flowers at his funeral, donations should be made to the Haematology Day Unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.

Those wishing to make a donation by credit card can access the Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (ACT) online donation website, where a drop down menu allows donation to a specific ward. The Haematology Day Unit is Ward E10 and can be found by scrolling down the list. There is also an opportunity to indicate that the donation is in memory of Keith.

Alternatively a cheque drawn on a UK bank and made out to ‘ACT (Ward E10)’ can be sent to:
ACT
Box 126
Addenbrooke’s Hospital
Hills Road
Cambridge CB2 0QQ

Euroschools Science Symposium

RSC Belgium was busy mid-March supporting the European Schools Science Symposium (ESSS) that took place this year from the 20th to 23rd at the European School Brussels II at Woluwe and at Eurocontrol. RSC Belgium provided speakers and sponsored a prize for the best chemistry-related entry.

As well as involving local RSC Belgium members, we were able to invite the RSC's interim CEO, Dr. Robert Parker, to Brussels to deliver a plenary address.

The ESSS is an annual opportunity for students from the 27 schools of the European School system to show off their scientific expertise. The European Schools system was established to provide native language teaching for the children of employees of the European Institutions. There are four schools in Brussels and the others are spread around Europe close to other major EU agencies from Bergen (NL) to Varese. In all 68 student projects were exhibited and described at the sysmposium.

Presentations and prizes
RSC Belgium attended the opening event on Sunday 20 March and provided two speakers. RSC interim Chief Executive Robert Parker (below) gave an entertaining after dinner address on 'Our future - chemists of the next generation'.


Before dinner RSC Belgium secretary Dr. Ian Carson had given a presentation on 'Science, Serendipity and Intrigue - the story of the modern potato crisp bag'.

The next two days were taken up with poster and oral presentations of the students' work at Eurocontrol. The Monday session was opened with some high-level speakers including EU Research Commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn and Eurocontrol boss David McMillan. The symposium closed on Wednesday with prize giving and a presentation from RSC Belgium Chairman Prof Bob Crichton on 'The Powerful Potential of Chemistry'.

Mol winners
The winner of the RSC Chemistry prize was the European School at Mol in Belgium. The winning team - whose project featured a study on chewing gum - are pictured below with RSC Belgium Chairman Bob Crichton and Woluwe Headmaster Richard Galvin (far right of picture).

Congratulations to the Mol school and many thanks to section secretary Ian Carson who was the prime mover for the section's involvement with this initiative. Some of the RSC Belgium team involved are pictured at the opening Sunday event below - from left to right Robert Parker, Tim Reynolds, Bob Crichton, Ulrica Grankvist-Nybacka (deputy director of the secondary school at Woluwe) and Ian Carson.