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Nick Syred

Winner of the NATO Science Partnership Prize 2002

More about... NATO Science Partnership Prize 2002

Born 11 July, 1944, in Upminster, Essex, United Kingdom, Professor Syred is Head, Division of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wales, Cardiff.

Nick Syred graduated with a BEng in Mechanical Engineering in 1965 and obtained a PhD in Power Fluidics in 1969, both at Sheffield University, and was subsequently appointed Research Fellow in the Department of Fuel Technology at Sheffield, under Norman Chigier and John Beer in the area of Swirling Flow and Combustion. He moved to University College, Cardiff in 1974, continuing his work on combustion, swirling vortex and cyclonic flows, centrifugal separation of particles, and heat and mass transfer processes in general.

His fields of interest include combustion of gaseous, liquid and solid fuels, heat exchangers, thermofluids, fluidics, water models, flow of steel, hot gas clean-up, cyclone dust separators and gas cleaning in general.

During his time at Cardiff, a team of up to 8 research assistants and several research students has been developed, producing 25 PhD theses and 5 MSc theses. He has obtained research grants amounting to more than £3M from diverse sources including UKAEA, SERC, British Coal, BP, EEC, Coal Processing Consultants Ltd and NSF in areas including biomass and coal combustion, heat exchangers, North Sea flare design, fundamentals of swirling flows with and without liquid/gaseous fuel combustion, power fluidics applied to the nuclear industry, and pressurised fluidised bed combustion, low NOx burners, novel cyclone dust separators, classifiers and gas centrifuges.

Most notable publications include the book Swirl Flows produced in 1984 jointly with two colleagues in the USA. This is now a standard reference book in this area.

In December 1987 the book Principles of Combustion Engineering for Boilers was published by Academic Press and this contained a long chapter on Cyclone Combustors by Professor Syred. This is again becoming a standard reference book in this area.

In 1992 he was invited to direct ODA Cell 15 in a 5-year joint research programme on combustion with Universiti Sans Malaysia, Perak, Malaysia.

Recently, he has served on the Coal Technology Sub-Committees, Process Engineering Committee and Energy Committees of the SERC, has been a member of the Watt Committee on Energy, is Chair of the Editorial Committee of the Journal of the Institute of Energy, member of the Committee of the British Section of the Combustion Institute, UK Representative on the EEC Committee studying large combustion facilities, a member of the UK Government's Coal Task Force and a member of the EPSRC Combustion College.

He has also acted as an External Examiner for many PhD/MSc submissions at Imperial College London, Leeds, Brighton, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Cranfield and Adelaide Universities.

He has been a Consultant to many organisations, including : UKAEA, British Coal, British Gas, Blue Circle Cement, Sturtevant Mill Company of Europe, NEI International, Babcock Power Ltd., Eminox, Hoover Ltd., Merpro Tortec, Llaidlaw Drew Ltd.

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