This book is a result of more than 20 years research on Simulated Moving Bed (SMB)
processes at the Laboratory of Separation and Reaction Engineering (LSRE) and teaching
at undergraduate level at the Department of Chemical Engineering (ChE), Faculty of
Engineering of University of Porto (FEUP), graduate courses at Technical University
(TU) Eindhoven and TU Delft, and an in-house course for Companhia Petroquímica
do Nordeste (COPENE) (now Brazchem) and Petrogal.
I graduated in ChE at University of Porto (U. Porto) in 1968, having never heard
about SMB during those years. I heard about PAREX (and other Sorbex processes) in
Nancy during my thesis work (1970e1973) with P. Le Goff and D. Tondeur. I found
the idea of SMBdturning fixed-bed operation into continuous processesda bright
one. After my African endeavors (teaching at the University of Luanda in Angola and
military service there), I landed again at FEUP in August 1976 as an Assistant Professor.
An optional course on Petroleum Refining for Chemical Engineering (ChE) was offered
to undergraduate students given by Lopes Vaz from Petrogal. He was working in Lisbon
but coming to Porto every Saturday morning to teach that course. I asked permission to
attend. Lopes Vaz was a very good lecturer. It was an opportunity to learn details of the
PAREX unit existing in the aromatics plant in the Refinery of Petrogal in Matosinhos.
After the Revolution of April 1974, FEUP began offering evening courses allowing
people with a “technical engineer” degree to get a diploma of Chemical Engineering
(ChE) from U. Porto by following an additional two-year program. One of my students
at that time was Soares Mota working for Petrogal and taking care of the PAREX unit.
In 1978, I organized my first NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on “Percolation
Processes: Theory and Applications.” One of the lecturers I invited was D. Broughton
from UOP (one of the inventors of SMB). He could not come, but instead A. De Rosset
lectured in that ASI. I had the opportunity to travel to Des Plaines (Illinois) to visit
Universal Oil Products (UOP) and meet D. Broughton at lunch. It was a business trip
that I remember because I met some leaders in the Adsorption area (Vermeulen and Klein
from University of California (UC) Berkeley, Wankat from Purdue, etc.).
In 1984, an opportunity arose for funding to work on PAREX and ISOMAR processes
when Veiga Sim~ao was Minister of Industry and Energy (MIE). He launched some
Contracts for Industrial Development (CDIs) and I took the initiative of encouraging
several engineers from Petrogal to join that initiative. The funding was supposed to be
equivalent to 100,000 euro, but when the MIE came to Porto for the signing ceremony
it seems he decided not to sign that CDI. I just found those documents while cleaning my
office.
