The Federation of Environmental Trade Associations (FETA), which is the recognised UK body representing the interests of manufacturers, suppliers, installers and contractors within the heat pump, controls, ventilating, refrigeration & air conditioning industry, recently announced the International Symposium on Fans, which takes place on November 6th, 2008 at IMechE, London.

This conference will be of benefit to fan manufacturers, fan designers and suppliers of fan related components, such as motors and couplings. However, the symposium has a wide focus. This reflects the wide distribution of fans in industry; power plants, steel plants, cement plants, petrochemicals, mine ventilation, tunnel ventilation, building ventilation and smoke extraction, electronic equipment cooling, vehicle cooling and general cooling applications. Indeed, from cooling the processor in a PC to providing the high volume air flow in a wind tunnel for a Formula 1 car, fans are found in vast numbers everywhere. In Europe fans consume 18% of all the electrical power used by electric motors, amounting to a staggering 143TW hours of power every year, reveals the organizer’s press release.

The event’s Organising Committee, led by Dr Ron Mulholland, Chief Engineer, Howden Global, has programmed, among others, the following presentations: “Performance Enhancement of Fans when they are the Bottleneck of a Process”, Paolo Saccenti, Service and After Sales Manager, Boldrocchi S.r.l., Italy; “Flow Analysis for Henderson Mine Exhaust Fan System”, Steve Back, Product Manager - Mine and Tunnel, LT-Babcock Inc, USA, “Development of Tip Leakage Passive Control Devices for Axial Flow Fans”, Stefano Bianchi, PhD Student, University of Rome, Italy; “Towards the Prediction of the Blade Trailing-Edge Noise of Axial-Flow Fans”, Alain Guedel, Project Manager - Scientific Division, CETIAT, France; “A Computational Method for Fan Noise Prediction: Application to Axial & Centrifugal Fans”, Esra Sorgüven, Assistant Professor, Yeditepe University, Turkey.