Plenary Lecture
On the Relation between Marine Pollution, Biofouling, and Undersea Metallic Corrosion – An Interdisciplinary Knowledge-Based Approach
Professor Fragiskos A. Batzias
Department of Industrial Management and Technology
University of Piraeus
GREECE
E-mail: fbatzi@unipi.gr
Abstract: Marine pollution takes place when potentially dangerous species enter seawater, coming from point and non point sources, like agricultural runoff. Biofouling is caused by the attachment and population growth of microorganisms (microfouling) or larger organisms (macrofouling) on undersea structures, either moving or fixed (like ships’ hulls or pipelines, respectively). Metallic corrosion is the deterioration of the metal through interaction with its environment, mainly by means of the establishment of local electrochemical cells on the metallic surface. All these phenomena (due either to natural causes or/and anthropogenic actions) are economically significant, since they decisively influence the energy expenditure and the maintenance schedule. In this lecture, we present the interaction between pollution, biofouling and corrosion by using the combination of an interdisciplinary environmental ontology (forming the knowledge base) with an algorithmic procedure using directed graphs (forming the inference engine background), including IF...THEN rules in a fuzzy version in order to count for uncertainty). Two case examples are presented, the first referring to ships’ hulls and ballast seawater tanks, and the second to undersea pipeline transport of natural gas.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Prof. Fragiskos Batzias holds a 5years Diploma and a PhD degree in Chemical Engineering, and a BSc in Economics. He has also studied Mathematics and Philosophy. He is Director of the Laboratory of Simulation of Industrial Processes and Head of the Research Group on Systems Analysis at the Department of Industrial Management and Technology of the University of Piraeus, Greece. He is teaching at the interdepartmental postgraduate courses (i) Systems of Energy Management and Protection of the Environment, running by the University of Piraeus in cooperation with the Chem. Eng. Dept. of the Nat. Tech. Univ. of Athens, and (ii) Techno-Economic Systems, running by the Electr. & Comp. Eng. Dept. of the Nat. Tech. Univ. of Athens in cooperation with the University of Athens and the University of Piraeus. His research interests are in chemical engineering systems analysis and knowledge based decision making. He has >100 publications in highly ranked journals and conference proceedings, including 29 research monographs in collective volumes, with 171 citations and an h-index of 8 (for the period 2004-2011, source: ISI Web of Science, Thompson Scientific; self-citations have been excluded). He has participated (and chaired after invitation from the organizers) in prestigious international conferences, such as those organized periodically by the IEEE, the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE), the DECHEMA, CHISA, WSEAS Organizations. He organizes the annual Symposium on Industrial and Environmental Case Studies running successfully since 2004 within the International Conference of Computational Methods in Sciences and Engineering (ICCMSE).