Life and Times in Engineering and Chemical Engineering

CH11CH02_Davidson ARjats.
cls May 19, 2020 8:13
Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular

Engineering
Life and Times in Engineering
and Chemical Engineering
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J.F. Davidson∗
Annu. Rev. Chem. Biomol. Eng. 2020.11:23-34. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge,

Cambridge CB2 3EJ, United Kingdom
Annu. Rev. Chem. Biomol. Eng. 2020. 11:23–34 Keywords

The Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular
fluidization, particle technology, John Davidson
Engineering is online at chembioeng.annualreviews.org
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-chembioeng- Abstract
011420-125935
John Davidson was widely recognized as the founding father of fluidization
Copyright © 2020 by Annual Reviews.
in chemical engineering. He was a great thinker and had a tremendous abil-
All rights reserved
ity to distill complicated problems into much simpler concepts. Much of his
∗
Professor Davidson passed away during production
thinking was set out, along with that of his coauthor David Harrison, in their
of this article
book Fluidised Particles, first published in 1963, a book that is still used today.
John was still coming into his office in Cambridge until the very last weeks
of his life, where he continued to work with final-year undergraduates and
graduate students. Fluidization, and two-phase flows, continued to fascinate
him, and that enthusiasm was transmitted to those around him. The follow-
ing article was the last work that he wrote and was very much a reflection
on his life and career. John passed away on Christmas Day 2019, with the
article in its final stages of preparation.
23
CH11CH02_Davidson ARjats.cls May 19, 2020 8:13
PARENTS
My parents met in 1911 on a package holiday in Switzerland. I have a picture of them on top of
Mount Pilatus, near Lake Geneva. They must have been very uncomfortable in the hot summer,
wearing traditional English clothes.
My father served in the trenches in World War I. My wife’s father also served, but on the other
side, as did many German Jews. My father was a cashier, working for Newcastle City, and may
have been a rent collector, a ghastly job. He died when I was nine. My mother was, providentially,
an experienced schoolteacher. She had taught in the East End of London, experiencing zeppelin
air raids. She readily got a job, teaching five- to six-year-olds in classes of 50 to 60 in a poor district
of Newcastle; some of the children came to school with bare feet.
EARLY YEARS
I grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne, then a great center of shipbuilding and armament manufacture.
I attended a state elementary school, learning by rote the 3 Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Each morning we chanted the multiplication tables and pence tables. I can still remember them:
80 pence = 6 shillings and 8 pence, etc. I then got a place at a state secondary school built in 1928
with excellent laboratories. The school had outstanding teachers. Jobs were scarce in the depths of
the post-1929 depression: The Head of Mathematics, Alfred Fletcher, had been trained as a naval
architect, but ships were not being built in the 1930s. Fletcher taught us statics and dynamics, in
a class of 12, with a rigor invaluable to this day.
Because of the war, there was the opportunity to go to Cambridge. This was because the gov-
ernment offered state bursaries to students of engineering or physics who, after a two-year course,
could contribute to the war effort. The bursaries were generous, fees paid plus a living allowance
of, in today’s prices, approximately £20,000 per annum, so I graduated with a positive bank balance,
unlike today’s graduates. An important aspect of the bursary was that it gave entry to Cambridge
without Latin. At that time, every student had to have studied a classical language, perhaps a “little
Latin and less Greek.” This archaic requirement was set aside during the war, so in 1944, I was
admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge. I had no idea about the Cambridge College system. So,
I went to the public library to see the Cambridge Yearbook: The only familiar name was that of
the great physicist J.J. Thomson, who discovered the electron; Thomson was shown as Master of
Trinity. I concluded that Trinity must be a good place. It was fortuitous: The library copy of the
Yearbook was out of date; J.J. Thomson had died in 1940. I was accepted by return of post from
Trinity and have never regretted the choice. I had the wartime course in mechanical sciences,
ending in 1946. The war having ended in 1945, a third-year course was on offer. But my tutor
advised me to spend the third year on research. This was a paradise year: interesting research (see
below); no examinations; and best of all I met Susanne, my future wife, who was a secretary at the
Engineering Department. We subsequently had 62 very happy years together. Susanne died in
2011. Since then I have had excellent support from my two children, Peter and Isabel. Peter, also
a chemical engineer, had an industrial career and identified interesting problems that we worked
on together; he contributed to this article. Isabel, a senior government lawyer, raises my morale
by telephoning every evening.
FIRST RESEARCH, 1946–1947

I had two projects in my year of undergraduate research. One was on swirling flow through
an orifice to study the shapes of the free surfaces. There was experimental work on a big
tank, plus theoretical work using relaxation methods. This description, relaxation methods, was
24 Davidson
inappropriate: The procedure involved solving, numerically, potential flow problems using a
finite-difference method, with a hand calculator. Nowadays, it would be done in a flash by a com-
puter. The other research was on lateral instability, static and dynamic, of bent beams. This gave
me experience of experimental work and an interest in eigenvalue theory, later to prove useful in
chemical engineering.
WORK AT ROLLS ROYCE, 1947–1950

In 1947, I graduated, to my surprise, top of the year. In lieu of military service, I was directed
to work at Rolls Royce, exactly what I wanted as a career step. The first six months were spent
on a shop floor apprenticeship, giving an insight into the lives of working people, highly skilled.
In many ways, it was the most leisurely period of my life: You had to clock in at 7:30 am, but
there was no great pressure. For example, in the foundry, the sand was often too wet or too dry,
so nothing was done for the first hour or two. Likewise, at 4:30 pm it became impossible to do
a casting before clocking off at 5:30 pm. The pattern shop, where very accurate wooden replicas
of the castings were made, was the most interesting. I learned more about woodwork in a month
than in five years of school woodwork lessons.
I then had two-and-a-half years in a group testing some of the world’s first jet engines. This was,
at times, fascinating, e.g., measuring turbine tip clearances on a running engine; it was important to
minimize the clearances between the rotating blades and the stationary shroud around the blades,
as big clearances gave loss of efficiency. A colleague and I had the happy thought of drilling holes
in the turbine shroud so as to get a tangential view of the ends of the blades when rotating at
approximately 8,000 rpm. This proved unexpectedly successful: When the moving blades made
the slightest contact with the shroud, there was a shower of sparks, seen through a telescope; the
engine could be shut down and the clearance adjusted. This avoided serious damage to the blades
and the shroud.
Another problem was icing. When a jet engine runs through a cloud of supercooled raindrops,
there is the worry that ice will accumulate on the compressor blades at the entry. The concern was
that lumps of ice would break off and damage the blades. So, we made cubes of ice in various sizes,
1–2 inches, which were thrown into the front of a running engine on the test bed. The result was
dramatic: The engine coughed a bit, but the ice was digested without damage.
At Rolls Royce, I had a little energy left in the evenings and continued to work on my Cam-
bridge projects: swirling of flow through an orifice (1) and lateral buckling of I-beams (2). I sub-
mitted two dissertations to Trinity College for the competition to elect Research Fellows: The
Research Fellowships are coveted four-year postdoctoral awards, usually for candidates who sub-
mit their PhD dissertations. I was duly elected and, after a further year at Rolls Royce, returned
to Cambridge to take up the Fellowship.
PhD WORK, 1950–1952

My PhD project was on the stability of bent beams, static and dynamic. I have to say that I did not
entirely enjoy this period of full-time research. I have always found that good ideas come when
there is something else pressing to do, and as a result I have always been skeptical about the lament
of academics: “If only we didn’t have all this teaching and could get on with full-time research.” At
that time, I was encouraged to apply for a Commonwealth Fund grant to spend a year in the United
States, a fashionable thing to do. My wife was dismayed: “What will you do when we return?” This
problem was solved by the award of a license to build a house in Cambridge. At that time, houses
were in short supply; a building license was precious. So, I took a junior teaching post in the newly
www.annualreviews.org • Life and Times in Engineering 25

established Department of Chemical Engineering in Cambridge. Binnie, my intended supervisor,

was not pleased. He wrote from California, “You have been beguiled by the excellent Professor’s
silvery tones into taking the first job offered to you.” The “excellent Professor” was T.R.C. Fox,
about whom there is more below.
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING IN CAMBRIDGE

The Beginning
In 1945, Shell gave Cambridge University a generous benefaction to initiate Chemical Engineer-
ing. The first Shell Professor was T.R.C. Fox. He did dramatically well in his final examination in
Mechanical Sciences (Cambridge code for Engineering!). After graduating, Fox had a few years
at ICI Billingham, working on the ammonia synthesis plant. At that time, ICI employed chemists
and engineers; chemical engineers were barely respectable.

Following the Shell Endowment, Fox had the daunting task of starting a new department:
buildings, workshop, appointing academic and assistant staff, etc. Fox did a superb job in devising
the teaching course, developing interests in fluid mechanics and chemical thermodynamics. His
teaching course was much as it now is: One stream of students entered with a pure science back-
ground; the other stream came from engineering. Fox was a scholarly man who gave excellent
lectures to undergraduates. He rewrote his lecture notes every year in beautiful tiny handwriting.
But he never published a single research paper. Fox’s staff appointments were imaginative: He
insisted on high academic standards, appointing staff with backgrounds in physical chemistry or
engineering, but who mostly had no knowledge of chemical engineering. The high standards were
also maintained by setting very difficult examination questions.
In Cambridge at that time, engineering aroused mild suspicion. Fox’s first lecturer, K.G.
Denbigh, dined at Gonville & Caius College. The Master was Sir James Chadwick, the great nu-
clear physicist, who discovered the neutron. His only conversation with Denbigh was to declare,
“There is no place in Cambridge for applied science.”
When I entered the Department in 1952, I knew nothing about chemical engineering, so I
taught a course in mathematics. My background turned out to be fortuitously useful. The Depart-
ment had a project, for the Atomic Energy Authority, to distill liquid hydrogen to give deuterium.
Associated with this project, there was a small distillation column in the Department containing
bubble caps with boiling liquid hydrogen at approximately 10 K, an outstanding technical achieve-
ment. The question arose: How long does it take to reach a steady state in the column using the fact
that the relative volatility for hydrogen/deuterium is approximately 1.8? My background proved
useful: I was lecturing on finite-difference analysis, appropriate for the 10-plate column. And I had
learned about eigenvalue analysis in my work on theory of structures. These topics came together
nicely for the bubble plate problem.
Buildings for the Department of Chemical Engineering

From 1948 to 1959, the Department was in the center of Cambridge. There were three build-
ings, best described as huts with brick walls and asbestos roofs. This was in the best hut tradition:
There were huts in Bletchley Park, the wartime code-breaking establishment. There were huts
in the Cavendish Laboratory, where the structure of DNA was discovered. Our huts were de-
signed by Professor Fox and served us well: no lifts or stairs and an intimate atmosphere; the
morning and afternoon tea breaks were among gas cylinders. Fox was keen on the tea breaks for
exchange of ideas between groups. It did not always work that way. One day Fox—a rather serious
26 Davidson
man—was explaining to industrial visitors this important function of the tea breaks. Then said
Fox to the visitors, “Let’s see what they are talking about now.” It was the latest Marilyn Monroe
film.
From 1959 to 2016, there was a building that comprised a 1905 chemistry laboratory plus a
new structure. These two blocks had different floor levels. Fox united them via an imaginative
staircase with landings and half landings to fit with the two different floor levels. Fox and Denys
Armstrong, a lecturer who was a talented administrator, were the de facto architects for the 1959
building. Now we have a splendid building approximately two miles from the town center. The
building unites Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. But the lifts don’t work well!
Crisis Year
In 1955, most of the teaching staff, recruited so carefully by Fox, left Cambridge: Peter Danck-
werts took a job in the Atomic Energy Authority; Kenneth Denbigh took a Chair at Edinburgh;
Ernest Sellers, our only academic staff (faculty) member with significant experience in the chem-
ical industry, took a Chair at Swansea. Professor Fox was unwell, so the only teaching staff, for a
period in 1955, were Denys Armstrong and me. We had an intake of 20 to 30 students a year for
the two-year course. Thus, for a short period, we had a student-to-staff ratio of approximately 30
to 1. It was an exhilarating job to “keep the show on the road.” I recall giving nine lectures a week
on topics recently learnt from the admirable McGraw-Hill series on Chemical Engineering.
FLUIDIZATION
The subject of fluidization, leading to 20 years or more of work, attracted attention by accident.
I had a very academic project on spherical-cap bubbles, predicting the shape by laborious use
of a computer. The work appeared to be of no practical use: A paper on it was rejected by a
well-known journal. But the relevance to fluidization was evident from observations of a fluidized
bed, set up for teaching. This led to a simple student project: A shot of air was injected into an
incipiently fluidized bed, and its emergence at the top, as a bubble, was recorded by a cine camera,
the image including a timer. It showed that the bubble velocity, Ub , closely followed the formula
√
Ub = 0.7 (gDe ), well established for large bubbles in low-viscosity liquids, e.g., water: Here, De is
the diameter of the sphere with the same volume as the bubble, and g is the acceleration of gravity.
The importance of this result was confirmed by an X-ray photograph of a bubble inside a fluidized
bed from Professor P.N. Rowe at the Atomic Energy Authority, showing the spherical-cap shape
very clearly; as for a large air bubble in water, see Figure 1.
The next step was to ask what happens to the gas within the bubble, bearing in mind that
the bubble has a porous wall. The answer came via potential flow theory, assuming the bubble
is spherical. The theory (see Figure 2) tells how the gas from the bubble penetrates into the
particulate phase. The penetration distance depends upon Ub /Umf , where Ub is bubble rise velocity
and Umf is incipient fluidizing velocity.
If Umf /Ub is small, the gas within the bubble shows limited penetration into the particulate
phase, forming a cloud of gas around the bubble (see Figure 2). This theoretical prediction, of
cloud formation, was later confirmed by experiments by P.N. Rowe at Harwell (see Figure 3). The
publication of the cloud theory was unusual. It was presented, orally, to a symposium of the Insti-
tution of Chemical Engineers and thus got published in a refereed journal without being refereed!
The theory shows why small laboratory and pilot plant fluidized beds may give lower chemical
conversion than full-scale units. The big bubbles cause bypassing, i.e., poor contact between gases
and solids.

Figure 1
X-ray photograph of a bubble (approximately 5 cm in diameter) rising in an incipiently fluidized bed
(Reference 1, p. 30).
Work on Fluidization with David Harrison

David Harrison arrived in the Cambridge Chemical Engineering Department in 1956. David
and I worked together on fluidization for many years, attending conferences organized by the
Engineering Foundation of New York. In the early 1960s, David had the bright idea of writing
a book on fluidization, duly published in 1963; the publisher, Cambridge University Press, was
Limit of Bubble
penetration
Ub = 25.9 cm/sec u0 = 19.9 cm/sec
Figure 2
Theoretical prediction of streamlines for a spherical bubble held stationary by a downward flow of particles.
The solid curves are particle tracks. The broken curves are fluid streamlines. Note the limit of fluid
penetration, giving the “cloud” around the bubble (Reference 1, p. 72).
28 Davidson
Air-fluidized NO2 NO2

bed “cloud”
Figure 3
Injection of a bubble containing NO2 into an air-fluidized bed. Note the formation of the NO2 “cloud”
around the rising bubble (Reference 1, p. 75).
most helpful. It was a struggle to write the book because David and I had busy secondary jobs (see
below).
College Jobs
As well as the commitments to lecture and supervise students in the Department, both David and I
had College jobs; pluralism, as formerly in ecclesiastical living, still prospers in Cambridge. David
was Senior Tutor at Selwyn College, responsible for student admissions, a big job. I was Steward
of Trinity, responsible for approximately 1,000 meals a day. Of course, the daily work was done by
the catering staff and their manager, but I helped to oversee the rebuilding of the Trinity College
kitchens at the time of writing the 1963 book. When I became Steward in 1957, the arrangements
were much as when the kitchens were built in 1605. All the glassware was carried outside in boxes
to be washed up; this happened whether or not it was raining or snowing. Writing the book was
a welcome relief from the stresses and anxieties of the job at Trinity.
PUBLICATIONS: CHOICE OF RESEARCH TOPICS

Useful Research
There is continuing pressure from funding agencies to do “useful” research. Often the writer of
a research grant application is required to set out “the social and economic benefits expected to
arise from the results.” We all have to do this, but it leads to absurdities. If research is genuinely
looking into the unknown, as one hopes it is, who can foresee the useful aspects of the (unknown)
outcome?
Contact with Industry

Contact with industry (see the section titled Consulting) can be very useful, but there may be
problems. A company may suggest an urgent area of work, from which the outcome is likely to
be beneficial to the company. A PhD student will duly be persuaded to work on the topic, with a

program to last three years or more. Then, after a year or so, commercial and economic factors
may intervene, causing the company to lose interest completely.
Unpredictable Results
There may be unpredictable results that are highly beneficial. People have often asked why I put so
much effort into bubbles. I recall early work on spherical-cap bubbles in liquids (see Section 7), a
theoretical study in the early days of computational fluid dynamics; the outcome was to predict the
bubble shape. The work led to studies on bubbles in fluidized beds, which helped to understand
fluid bed reactor behavior. I was particularly pleased when a Frenchman from Rhône-Poulenc told
me, “All is explained by your model.”
Bubbles, Froth Flotation

Graeme Jameson FRS provided another example of how useful academic work can be. He arrived
from Australia, full of enthusiasm to work on a fascinating problem he brought with him: A bubble
can be made to move downward in liquid under vertical up-and-down oscillations. This did not
much seem to be of much use, but it gave Graeme an interest in bubbles. This led to a wonder-
ful invention when Graeme returned to Australia, to control the bubble size in a froth flotation
tank. This improved performance: Graeme’s invention is used throughout the Australian mineral
process industry.
Energy Studies
Some of the topics, e.g., the study of coal combustion in a fluidized bed, have gone completely:
No one wants to promote coal combustion. But it is odd that, energy and its conservation now
being so important, all the government-funded laboratories working on energy have closed. In
the United Kingdom, there used to be laboratories on gas, coal, electricity, and water: All gone.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become a leading activity in the Cambridge Department,
recognized worldwide because of its ability to observe flow fields, measure compositions, and pro-
duce images without physical intrusion.
The origin of MRI in chemical engineering illustrates how things get done in a university
department. The relevant UK government Research Council (EPSRC) discovered, near the end
of a financial year, that they were in danger of underspending on their budget. For a government
department, this is a serious matter: Underspending implies not frugality but bad management. So,
a peremptory request was sent to universities inviting departments to submit proposals promptly.
In haste, the Department submitted seven proposals. In the event only one, which had provoked
some derision because of the expense, was granted: a sum for an MRI machine, but only enough
to buy one that had been left out in the rain. The running cost was alarming: I recall Professor
Lynn Gladden informing me that these costs were of order £12,000 per annum. This was met
from resources: The Shell benefaction had included £50,000 for large equipment, then a normal
feature of engineering departments. Professor Fox had wisely decided not to buy large equipment:
It gets out of date and costs a lot to house and maintain. So, the £50,000 was invested, thereby
providing the Department a fund from which the helium and related costs were paid. Such funds
are not popular with university administrators. But discretionary funds are crucial for research,
which inevitably generates unexpected costs, and sometimes economies.
30 Davidson
MRI has proved useful in studying fluidized bed behavior and many other phenomena. It was
developed by academics working on physical chemistry. It found use in medical applications and
then in engineering, particularly in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Cambridge. Who
could have foreseen the wide applications in the early days of MRI?
Biotechnology
In the 1960s, committees drew attention to biotechnology. It was suggested that almost any chem-
ical could be made by fermentation, thus replacing existing processes. This caused excitement. It
is true that a wide range of chemicals can be made in fermenters, but usually in dilute solution,
so separation costs are prohibitive for bulk chemicals. Biotechnology is nevertheless important,
and the Department acquired a post under what was called the New Blood scheme. This scheme
offered government-funded posts to people under the age of 35. There was protest about the in-
terpretation of “under 35”: Eventually, it was agreed that women a little over the age of 35, with
children, were deemed to be under the age of 35.
In due course, the Department appointed Chris Lowe as Lecturer in Biotechnology. Chris
quickly built up a team within the Department. Later, it seemed desirable to set up a separate
laboratory, the Institute of Biotechnology. After some years, this became unattractive, because the
grant-giving authority classified the Institute under the heading Biological Sciences. The pure sci-
entists on the grant-giving body were less friendly than their opposite numbers supporting Chem-
ical Engineering. So, our biotechnologists went back to the umbrella of Chemical Engineering to
form the present Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology.
HEAD OF DEPARTMENT, 1975–1993

I was Head of Department from 1975 until 1993, when I reached the retiring age. Long service
has advantages: You come to have a longer memory of events than the administrators with whom
you have to deal.
Recruitment of Academic Staff

Much the most important job is the appointment of academic staff. One of the administrators
tried to persuade me to delegate the detailed work of recruitment: I ignored their advice. It seems
to me that if a good candidate gets correspondence from the Head of Department at an early
stage, they know you mean business. The Department had a long tradition of recruiting academic
staff with a variety of backgrounds, perhaps without any knowledge of chemical engineering. The
danger is that such a candidate may seek to continue his or her research in a topic remote from
chemical engineering. The advantage is that people from widely different backgrounds bring new
ideas. But there has to be willingness to learn a new trade and teach it effectively.
CONSULTING
Over the years, I did a good deal of consulting for industry, modestly lucrative, but also invaluable
for suggesting interesting research. I give one example.
Pruteen
The Pruteen process, developed by ICI, used fermentation based on microbes from the Durham
soil to convert methanol into animal foodstuff, as a competitor to fish meal. Methanol, made from

Bubble disengager
Clear
liquid
Start-up
Air 1
Air 2
~100 m
Downcomer Riser
Figure 4
Deep-shaft sewage treatment; when running normally, there is downcomer air only (Air 2).
natural gas, was then abundant and cheap. The process used a huge aerated fermenter, 10 m in
diameter and 60 m high, perhaps the largest ever. Sterility was a difficult problem: Unwanted cells
would get in and take over the fermenter. This problem was solved by my son: He deduced that
reverse flow could occur, transiently, in sample points, bringing in large bubbles (slugs), which
promoted the entry of unwanted bacteria into the fermenter.
After a large development effort, the process became uneconomic because of reduction in the
price of agricultural competitors and the increasing price of natural gas. But there was a useful,
unexpected, outcome: the deep-shaft sewage treatment column (see Figure 4).
Liquid circulation is induced initially by air blown in at point 1. This causes liquid to go up the
riser and through the disengagement channel, to give bubble-free liquid entering the downcomer.
The downward liquid velocity is enough to carry down bubbles of air from injection point 2; this
air goes to the bottom of the downcomer and thence up the riser.
Because of the clear liquid above injection point 2, the mean density in the downcomer is
higher than in the riser, so circulation persists without air at point 1. The 100-m depth of the
shaft is advantageous for fermentations, e.g., sewage treatment. First, the high pressure at the bot-
tom, perhaps 10 bar, gives a high concentration of dissolved oxygen. And second, dissolved CO2 ,
generated in the fermentation, enlarges the bubbles as they are carried up the riser under reduc-
ing pressure; this helps the liquid circulation. My contribution was to help with understanding the
flow mechanisms.
32 Davidson
Section 25A
Figure 5
The plant at Flixborough soon after the explosion, which originated from a large escape of cyclohexane in
Section 25A.
The Flixborough Disaster

In 1974, there was a huge explosion at Flixborough in the Midlands of England. It killed 28 people,
destroyed a large chemical plant, and damaged houses miles away. The plant had a large inventory
of cyclohexane at approximately 8 bar pressure. A quantity suddenly escaped, forming a cloud of
vapor, liquid droplets, and air. This cloud ignited with the force of 20 tonnes of TNT.
Figure 5 shows the plant soon after the explosion. The escape of cyclohexane was due to
a hastily conceived assembly, composed of two bellows, 28 inches in diameter, connected by a
thin-wall cranked pipe. The pipe buckled, tearing off the bellows, to leave two 28-inch orifices
connected to the large inventory of cyclohexane liquid at approximately 8 bar.
The government appointed a Committee of Inquiry with four members. The Chairman was
a distinguished lawyer, Roger Parker, QC. Also included was Bill Simpson, a trade union repre-
sentative, who helped to set up the current Health & Safety Executive. There were two of us as
technical experts, Joe Pope, a mechanical engineer, and myself as a chemical engineer. We had the
powers of a High Court. Appearing before us were ten parties, each represented by three or four
lawyers.
It was obvious from the start that the explosion was primarily due to the above-mentioned
temporary pipe and bellows assembly, installed hurriedly. But there was much dispute in the court-
room as to the initiating factor: Was the pipe/bellows assembly the sole cause, or was there another
initiating explosion? After hearing much evidence, the Court decided that the sole cause of the
disaster was the pipe and bellows assembly. The Court sat for 70 days; this, together with writing
the voluminous report, took approximately a year of my life. The report did lead to an increase
in safety standards in the chemical industry, particularly, caution about modification of plant and
laboratory equipment.
A crucial point for me was that my training in mechanics, at school and university, was in-
valuable. The analysis of the pipe and bellows assembly involved hydrostatics going back to

Archimedes. Fortunately, I had been well-drilled in hydrostatics, e.g., metacentric heights relat-
ing to the stability of ships. The excellent tuition in hydrostatics was from the above-mentioned
Alf Fletcher at school and from Fox, whose lectures were part of the mechanical sciences course.
Fox gave brilliant lectures on mechanics. I recall him illustrating the difference between static and
dynamic friction by sitting on a chair and moving it across the lecture room by swinging his legs
to and fro without touching the floor, cueing cheers from the undergraduates.
CONCLUSION
I could not have wished for a more interesting career. I always enjoyed teaching: It widens one’s
fields of knowledge. The constant contact with clever students is stimulating; the skepticism of
youth and their inevitable questions are invaluable. I recall a visit, in the 1950s, of Professor
Neal Amundson, from the University of Minnesota; he was an immensely distinguished research
worker. But at tea one day he said, “We wouldn’t be in business without the students.”
Industrial contacts have been useful. Getting out of the ivory tower is stimulating and refresh-
ing: Contact with the outside world is important.
University administration is useful: Somebody’s got to do it. Making the wheels of the Uni-
versity and Colleges turn smoothly is refreshing; when it is too irksome, it is good to get back to
teaching and research.
Variety is the spice of life: I have been very fortunate to have had it in great measure.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The author is not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that might
be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.
LITERATURE CITED
1. Davidson JF, Harrison D. 1963. Fluidised Particles. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
2. Health Saf. Exec. 1975. The Flixborough Disaster: Report of the Court of Inquiry. London: Her Majesty’s
Station. Off.
34 Davidson
CH11_TOC ARI 19 May 2020 13:56
Annual Review of
Chemical and
Biomolecular
Engineering
Volume 11, 2020
Contents
A ChemE Grows in Brooklyn

Carol K. Hall p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 1
Life and Times in Engineering and Chemical Engineering
J.F. Davidson p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p23
Biological Assembly of Modular Protein Building Blocks as Sensing,
Delivery, and Therapeutic Agents
Emily A. Berckman, Emily J. Hartzell, Alexander A. Mitkas,
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Bioprivileged Molecules: Integrating Biological and Chemical
Catalysis for Biomass Conversion
Jiajie Huo and Brent H. Shanks p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p63
Cellular Automata in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
Natalia V. Menshutina, Andrey V. Kolnoochenko, and Evgeniy A. Lebedev p p p p p p p p p p p p p p87
Computational Fluid Dynamics for Fixed Bed Reactor Design
Anthony G. Dixon and Behnam Partopour p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 109
Covalent Organic Frameworks in Separation
Saikat Das, Jie Feng, and Wei Wang p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 131
How Do Cells Adapt? Stories Told in Landscapes
Luca Agozzino, Gábor Balázsi, Jin Wang, and Ken A. Dill p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 155
Hydrolysis and Solvolysis as Benign Routes for the End-of-Life
Management of Thermoset Polymer Waste
Minjie Shen, Hongda Cao, and Megan L. Robertson p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 183
Life Cycle Assessment for the Design of Chemical Processes, Products,
and Supply Chains
Johanna Kleinekorte, Lorenz Fleitmann, Marvin Bachmann, Arne Kätelhön,
Ana Barbosa-Póvoa, Niklas von der Assen, and André Bardow p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 203
CH11_TOC ARI 19 May 2020 13:56
Mechanistic Modeling of Preparative Column Chromatography

for Biotherapeutics
Vijesh Kumar and Abraham M. Lenhoff p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 235
Molecular Modeling and Simulations of Peptide–Polymer Conjugates

Phillip A. Taylor and Arthi Jayaraman p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 257
Multiscale Lithium-Battery Modeling from Materials to Cells

Guanchen Li and Charles W. Monroe p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 277
N -Glycosylation of IgG and IgG-Like Recombinant Therapeutic

Proteins: Why Is It Important and How Can We Control It?

Natalia I. Majewska, Max L. Tejada, Michael J. Betenbaugh,

and Nitin Agarwal p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 311
Numerical Methods for the Solution of Population Balance Equations

Coupled with Computational Fluid Dynamics
Mohsen Shiea, Antonio Buffo, Marco Vanni, and Daniele Marchisio p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 339
Positron Emission Particle Tracking of Granular Flows

C.R.K. Windows-Yule, J.P.K. Seville, A. Ingram, and D.J. Parker p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 367
Possibilities and Limits of Computational Fluid Dynamics–Discrete

Element Method Simulations in Process Engineering: A Review
of Recent Advancements and Future Trends
Paul Kieckhefen, Swantje Pietsch, Maksym Dosta, and Stefan Heinrich p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 397
Process Control and Energy Efficiency

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and Michael Baldea p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 423
Quorum Sensing Communication: Molecularly Connecting Cells,

Their Neighbors, and Even Devices
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Ingredients
Heike Lorenz and Andreas Seidel-Morgenstern p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 469
Unconventional Catalytic Approaches to Ammonia Synthesis

Patrick M. Barboun and Jason C. Hicks p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 503
Water Structure and Properties at Hydrophilic and Hydrophobic

Surfaces
Jacob Monroe, Mikayla Barry, Audra DeStefano, Pinar Aydogan Gokturk,
Sally Jiao, Dennis Robinson-Brown, Thomas Webber, Ethan J. Crumlin,
Songi Han, and M. Scott Shell p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 523
CH11_TOC ARI 19 May 2020 13:56
Water Treatment: Are Membranes the Panacea?

Matthew R. Landsman, Rahul Sujanani, Samuel H. Brodfuehrer,
Carolyn M. Cooper, Addison G. Darr, R. Justin Davis, Kyungtae Kim,
Soyoon Kum, Lauren K. Nalley, Sheik M. Nomaan, Cameron P. Oden,
Akhilesh Paspureddi, Kevin K. Reimund, Lewis Stetson Rowles III,
Seulki Yeo, Desmond F. Lawler, Benny D. Freeman, and Lynn E. Katz p p p p p p p p p p p p p 559
Errata
An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

articles may be found at http://www.annualreviews.org/errata/chembioeng


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CH11CH02_Davidson ARjats.

cls May 19, 2020 8:13

Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular

Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge,

Annu. Rev. Chem. Biomol. Eng. 2020. 11:23–34 Keywords

FIRST RESEARCH, 1946–1947

WORK AT ROLLS ROYCE, 1947–1950

PhD WORK, 1950–1952

www.annualreviews.org • Life and Times in Engineering 25

established Department of Chemical Engineering in Cambridge. Binnie, my intended supervisor,

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING IN CAMBRIDGE

and engineers; chemical engineers were barely respectable.

Buildings for the Department of Chemical Engineering

www.annualreviews.org • Life and Times in Engineering 27

Work on Fluidization with David Harrison

Ub = 25.9 cm/sec u0 = 19.9 cm/sec

Air-fluidized NO2 NO2

PUBLICATIONS: CHOICE OF RESEARCH TOPICS

Contact with Industry

www.annualreviews.org • Life and Times in Engineering 29

Bubbles, Froth Flotation

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

HEAD OF DEPARTMENT, 1975–1993

Recruitment of Academic Staff

www.annualreviews.org • Life and Times in Engineering 31

The Flixborough Disaster

www.annualreviews.org • Life and Times in Engineering 33

Volume 11, 2020

A ChemE Grows in Brooklyn

Mechanistic Modeling of Preparative Column Chromatography

Molecular Modeling and Simulations of Peptide–Polymer Conjugates

Multiscale Lithium-Battery Modeling from Materials to Cells

N -Glycosylation of IgG and IgG-Like Recombinant Therapeutic

Proteins: Why Is It Important and How Can We Control It?

Natalia I. Majewska, Max L. Tejada, Michael J. Betenbaugh,

Numerical Methods for the Solution of Population Balance Equations

Positron Emission Particle Tracking of Granular Flows

Possibilities and Limits of Computational Fluid Dynamics–Discrete

Process Control and Energy Efficiency

Quorum Sensing Communication: Molecularly Connecting Cells,

Separation Processes to Provide Pure Enantiomers and Plant

Unconventional Catalytic Approaches to Ammonia Synthesis

Water Structure and Properties at Hydrophilic and Hydrophobic

Water Treatment: Are Membranes the Panacea?

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

articles may be found at http://www.annualreviews.org/errata/chembioeng

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