Juray De Wilde

Prof. Juray De Wilde received his B.Sc., M.Sc. (1995) and PhD (2001) degrees at the Ghent University, Belgium, working with Profs. Gilbert Froment, Guy Marin and Geraldine Heynderickx. In 2005, following postdoctoral work at the Ghent University with Profs. Erik Dick and Guy Marin and at Princeton University with Prof. Sankaran Sundaresan, he joined the faculty at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium. He became Associate Professor in Chemical Engineering and received his tenure in 2008. He served as academic secretary (2007-2014) and vice-president (2014-present) of the Doctoral School in Process Engineering (GEPROC) of the Walloon region of Belgium. Since September 2012 he is the head of the Materials and Process Engineering Division (IMAP) at UCL. His research expertise includes kinetic modeling, the use of dynamic methods, and the modeling and simulation of chemical reactors accounting for complex (multiphase) flow patterns and detailed reaction kinetics.

In his group at UCL, research focuses on novel reactor concepts allowing process intensification or the development of alternative processing routes. Reaction kinetics and reactor hydrodynamics are experimentally studied in specifically designed lab-scale equipment. Experimental data are used for model development and validation and simulation codes are developed facilitating reactor optimization and scale-up. In collaboration with industrial partners, applications for the novel reactor concepts are developed: steam methane reforming using structured catalytic reactors, advanced surface coating using an atmospheric pressure low-temperature plasma deposition reactor, and production, coating and drying of particles in vortex chambers (high-G).

Prof. Juray De Wilde is the co-holder of 2 patents and authored or co-authored 40 scientific publications in international journals and more than 100 conference proceedings. With Profs. Gilbert Froment and Kenneth Bischoff (†), he co-authored the third edition of Chemical Reactor Analysis and Design (John Wiley & Sons, 2010). Prof. Juray De Wilde is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and of Eurokin and served in the scientific committee of the 21st International Symposium on Chemical Reaction Engineering (ISCRE), as session chairman at more than 20 international meetings or symposia, in numerous PhD committees, and as a consultant for numerous companies. He is member of the editorial board of the Journal of Powder Technology and a regular referee for more than 30 journals. In 2012 he received a Dow Corning European Donation.