HSZG hosts international conference

On behalf of the German National Committee of the International Organization for the Properties of Water and Steam "International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam" (IAPWS), Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences took the lead in organizing the “2016 IAPWS Meetings” conference in cooperation with the Technical University of Dresden, Ruhr University Bochum, and the VDI Society for Energy and Environment.

This annual IAPWS conference took place from September 11 to 16, 2016, at the Steigenberger Hotel de Saxe in Dresden. The organizing team from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering was led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Hans-Joachim Kretzschmar, who also serves as vice chair of the German National Committee and president of the IAPWS.

109 IAPWS members and guests from Egypt, Australia, China, Denmark, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, Serbia, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, Turkey, and the U.S. attended. The conference was opened by the Rector of the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences, Prof. Dr. phil. Friedrich Albrecht.

In five working groups, current projects in the fields of thermodynamic state variables and transport properties of water vapor, water, ice, seawater, moist air, and other mixtures containing water, as well as power plant chemistry, were presented, discussed, and evaluated in technical presentations. The resulting documents were adopted as international standards, supplementary standards, and guidelines. The algorithms described therein are used worldwide in computational programs for the simulation, optimization, and online monitoring of machinery, equipment, and systems in the fields of energy, process, and utility engineering.

The Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences reported, among other things, on a newly developed method in the Department of Technical Thermodynamics for the rapid calculation of material data in complex process simulations such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This method was designated as an IAPWS guideline and established as an international standard.

As part of the conference, the symposium “Steam, Water, and Aqueous Mixtures in Energy and Process Engineering” took place on September 14, 2016. The symposium, which was open to experts regardless of their affiliation with the IAPWS, was opened by Uwe Gaul, State Secretary of the Saxon State Ministry of Science and the Arts. Scientists presented on current research and development work in the fields of material-value thermodynamics as well as energy, process, utility, and refrigeration engineering. Following this, participants were invited to a field trip/course / fieldwork to DREWAG - Stadtwerke Dresden GmbH.

As a result of this conference—which participants rated as exceptionally successful—further opportunities for future collaborations and the initiation of international research were identified for the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences.

Next year, the IAPWS workshop will take place in Kyoto, Japan. The 2017 annual meeting of the German National Committee of the IAPWS will be held on March 17, 2017, at Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg.

Further information is available on the website www.iapws.de.