Origins and Activities

A Consultancy in Chemical Engineering

Principal consultant Dr Wayne A. Davies, started the business in 1988 as an honorary academic within the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Sydney during which time he combined un-paid, part-time teaching with research and consulting.

His areas of interest include: innovative process and plant designs for industry, fuels, oil and gas refining, biodiesel, waste recycling, cryogenics, heat exchanger design, equipment innovat ions, plant troubleshoot ing and biological processes. One of his passions is precise and disinterested interpretation of scientific data, a field of endeavour often sullied by incompetence and partisanship as well as the sadly unindictable offense of "statistics abuse".

He also acts as an expert witness in the fields of process and plant design.

SN2, formed in 2004, is now a general chemical engineering consultancy with research and development activities that include: biofuels including: biodiesel, ethanol and paper pulp from sugarcane, high temperature liquid phase waste conversion (oxidation, reduction, hydrolysis etc.) cryogenic recovery and purification of SF6 and CFCs.

About our name

The company name SN2 was derived from chemist's shorthand for "bimolecular nucleophilic substitution" this being one of the reaction pathways that occur in transesterification for making biodiesel.