AFS 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

May 4-7 , 2009
Bloomington, MN

Conference Sessions

The 22nd Annual AFS Conference overcame significant challenges to be one of the most success conferences for AFS in recent history. The poor economy forced many companies to curtail travel to all conferences. The swine flu issue raised concerns about the safety of travel and caused one company to restrict travel for all its’ employees. In the end, the desire to network and learn from our filtration colleagues overcame these challenges.

The turnout for this AFS conference was the most for any AFS conference since AFS held the World Filtration Congress in 2004. Frequently the greatest challenge for attendees was finding a place to sit at a technical session or at the full lunch venues. Exhibitors were very pleased as attendees needed to pass by their displays to move to the various meeting rooms.

The attendees had a very international flavor as there was a delegation of 20 from Shanghai, China and a significant number of attendees from Europe.

Very popular events for the conference were local tours. On Monday, May 4th, 35 attendees toured the Particle Technology Lab at the University of Minnesota and TSI, Incorporated. On Thursday, May 7th, 75 attendees toured GE Osmonics and Donaldson Company.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the conference day began with plenary presentations and then broke into three concurrent tracks of technical sessions. Tuesday and Wednesday also had featured speakers at lunch.

The featured speakers this year where:

Dr. David Pui, University of Minnesota
Dr. Steve Tarleton, University of Loughborough
Ms. Elizabeth Carey, Cummins Power Generation
Dr. Gerhard Kasper, Universitat Karlsruhe
Mr. John T. Peichel, GE Osmonics
Dr. Debra Wilfong, Donaldson Company

The conference opened with two interesting presentations. Dr. David Y.H. Pui, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, University of Minnesota, spoke on the "Integrated Filtration Research: Filtration of Nanoparticles, Bioparticles and Agglomerates; Nanofiber Filtration; Liquid-borne Particle Filtration."

Steve Tarleton, Senior Lecturer, Loughborough University, UK, followed with a talk on "Filtration Selection, Scale-up and Selection in the 21st Centuruy."

The Tuesday lunch was annual award lunch for AFS.

The award winners for AFS this year where:

Senior Scientist – Dr. Dan Japuntich, 3M
Frank Tiller Award – Dr. Ray Collins, Dow Chemical
Wells Shoemaker Award – Mr. Lew Osterhoudt, Met-Pro
Fellow Member Award – Dr. George Chase, Univ. of Akron
Lifetime Achievement – Mr. Ed Gregor, Edward C. Gregor & Assoc.

The Tuesday Lunch speaker was Elizabeth Carey, Chief Technical Officer, Cummins Power Generation Group. Her topic, "A Customer's Perspective On the Importance of Filtration" discussed the importance of communication with your customers.

The student poster completion was held on Tuesday, May 5th and the winners were announced during the Wednesday lunch. The student posters were excellent this year and the judges rankings were very close. Sneha Swaminathan, University of Akron and Nick Stanley, University of Minnesota, tied for first place and each was awarded $800. Rahul Bharadwaj, University of Akron, was awarded third place and $400.

On Wednesday morning there were two more outstanding plenary talks. John T. Peichel, GE Water & Process Technologies, spoke on "Six Sigma: Product Development and Product Management." Dr. Gerhard Kasper, Universtat of Karlsruhe spoke on "The Kinetics of Dust Filtration."

The Wednesday Lunch speaker was Dr. Debra Wilfong, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Donaldson Company. She spoke on "Emerging Challenges of Fuel Filtration."

Over the course of the conference there were over 90 presentations on a variety of filtration and separation topics.

View Conference Sessions

Conference Sponsors
International Filter Testing Services

Sheraton Hotel, Bloomington, Minnesota