Dr. J. D. Seader
University of Utah, Salt Lake City
J. D. Seader is an alumnus of the University of California at Berkeley with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 1949 and an M.S in 1950, followed by a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1952, with a minor in mathematics. He joined the faculty of the University of Utah as a Professor of Chemical Engineering in 1966 after working in industry for seven years with Chevron Research in Richmond, California, for six years with the Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation in the Los Angeles area, and for one year at the University of Idaho.
At Chevron, where he rose to Group Supervisor, first of Chemical Process Design and then of Engineering Research, he completed the process design of five chemical processes that were constructed and operated at four different Chevron refineries. He also supervised the development of the Chao-Seader vapor-liquid equilibrium correlation, which after publication in 1961 was widely used in computer-aided simulation calculations for process design and received a Citation Classic award in 1982. He also conceived and supervised the development of one of the first computer-aided simulation programs for process design.
At Rocketdyne, where he rose to Principal Scientist of Heat Transfer and Fluid Dynamics Research, he conducted heat-transfer research on all of the rocket nozzles that took man to the moon. He also supervised the development of one of the first computer programs for calculation of the ablation rate of re-entry nose cones, helped design the rocket engine for the space shuttle, and conducted design calculations for a nuclear rocket engine.
Seaders 1965 article, co-authored with W.S. Miller and D.M. Trebes, on forced-convection heat transfer to liquid hydrogen at supercritical pressures and temperature below 100 K, received a NASA award in 1971.
At the University of Utah, Professor Seaders research was conducted in several areas of chemical engineering, involving both experimental studies and mathematical modeling. Initially, he concentrated on heat transfer and fluid dynamics for applications to rocket nozzle heat transfer. He then conducted experimental research in smoke development, which led to a correlation that has been used to predict the consequences of a potential nuclear winter. Next he pursued theoretical studies leading to methods for synthesizing separation sequences in process design and designing complex distillation configurations. This was followed by experimental studies of heat transfer and fluid mechanics for downward flowing gas-solids suspensions for application to the hydrogenation of coal particles. With Professor Noel H. deNevers, Seader developed a method for computing the energy efficiency of a chemical process using the first and second laws of thermodynamics. In 1976, he began research on an energy-efficient process for the continuous conversion of Utah tar sands to liquid fuels, based on a novel system of two fluidized beds that were thermally coupled with heat pipes. The process, which he conceived with K.M. Jayakar, was awarded a U.S. patent in 1978 and a Canadian patent in 1984. In 1990, he teamed with Professor F.E. Massoth in a sequence of experimental studies of restrictive diffusion in porous catalyst particles for application to the hydroprocessing of coal and coal liquids. In 1990, he also directed the experimental closed-calorimeter studies for the detection of cold fusion by the College of Engineering. These studies, carried out by Dr. A. Riley, found no evidence of cold fusion.
In 1983, Professor Seader and T.L. Wayburn, a Ph.D. candidate, made a major breakthrough in the application of homotopy continuation to the determination of all solutions to a large nonlinear system of algebraic and transcendental equations, using a computer program written by Wayburn for computing interlinked distillation columns. The work was presented in 1984 at the Second International Conference on Foundations of Computer-Aided Process Design in Snowmass, Colorado, where it was voted the best paper of the conference.
This work initiated a long series of theoretical research studies by Professor Seader and his students on mathematical methods for finding all solutions to any nonlinear system of algebraic and transcendental equations, which has continued even after his retirement in 2003. These methods have application to electrical engineering and mechanical engineering, as well to many types of calculations in chemical engineering. For a paper on a novel homotopy continuation method, he and his co-authors received the 1990 Best Paper Award of the journal, Computers and Chemical Engineering.
By the year of his retirement in 2003, Professor Seader had received 25 research grants and contracts, authored or co-authored 109 published articles in refereed technical journals, written 40 research reports, and presented more than 70 seminars and short courses throughout the United States and 10 foreign countries. Under his supervision, 14 students received M.S. degrees, and 23 received Ph.D. degrees. Throughout his academic career, Professor Seader has helped produce widely used chemical engineering textbooks. In 1974, he coauthored the first of three editions of his first textbook, FLOWTRAN Simulation - An Introduction with W.D. Seider and A.C. Pauls. In 1981, he teamed with E.J. Henley to produce a second textbook, Equilibrium-Stage Separation Operations in Chemical Engineering. In 1998, that book was expanded to the first of two editions of Separation Process Principles. In 1999, he teamed with W.D. Seider and D.R. Lewin to produce Process Design Principles, a second edition of which was expanded to include product design. He co-authored the sections on Distillation for the 6th and 7th editions of Perrys Chemical Engineers Handbook in 1984 and 1997, respectively.
Innovation in education has been a hallmark for Professor Seader. In 1975, he was honored with a Distinguished Teaching Award by the University of Utah. He received a special Deans Teaching Award from the College of Engineering at the University of Utah in 1998. Throughout his 37 years of teaching at the University of Utah, he was consistently ranked high in evaluations made by chemical engineering students. He was an early and very strong advocate of a computer-aided approach to teaching separations and process design. This stance led to a featured article in 1982 on his teaching career in the journal, Chemical Engineering Education.
Dr. Seader was a founding member and, for 33 years, a trustee of the national organization, CACHE (Computer Aids for Chemical Engineering Education). Over a 20-year period, he directed, for CACHE, the use and distribution of Monsantos FLOWTRAN computer-aided process simulation computer program to 190 chemical engineering departments worldwide. He served as Executive Officer of CACHE from 1980 to 1984. CACHE honored his long and influential career at a banquet held in Napa, California in 2003.
Professor Seader was active in many leadership positions during his career, including serving as the second chairman of the Department of Chemical and Fuels Engineering at the University of Utah from 1975 to1978. In 1985, he was elected to the National Board of Directors of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) for a three-year period. From 1986 to 1999, he served as Associate Editor of the research journal, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research of the American Chemical Society (ACS). He was honored with a special Festschrift issue of that journal in June of 2000. Just prior to his retirement in 2003, the Department of Chemical Engineering established the J.D. Seader Student Leadership Scholarship, which automatically is given to the undergraduate student who serves as the president of the student chapter of the AIChE. In 2004, he received the CACHE Award for Excellence in Computing in Chemical Engineering Education from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). His most prestigious award, which also came in 2004, was the Warren K. Lewis Award for Chemical Engineering Education from the AIChE, which he shared jointly with Professor Warren D. Seider.