Rate My Professor Terry Wall

Emeritus Professor Terry Wall holds a prominent position in the School of Engineering at the University of Newcastle, Australia, within the Faculty of Engineering. He obtained his Chemical Engineering degree from RMIT University and completed his PhD on coal combustion at the University of Newcastle in the late 1960s. After moving to Newcastle for his doctoral studies, he returned in the mid-1970s and progressed to Emeritus Professor. Wall has been instrumental in establishing the University of Newcastle as an international centre of excellence for sustainable coal utilisation. He led the Cooperative Research Centre for Black Coal Utilisation and its successor, the CRC for Coal in Sustainable Processes, and supervised more than 50 PhD students. His leadership extended to the Centre for Energy and the Low Emission Coal Program, fostering collaborations with institutions such as the University of Stuttgart and IHI Corporation in Japan, including involvement in the Callide Oxyfuel Project.

Wall's research focuses on coal combustion, ash formation and deposition, mineral transformations, particle ignition, radiative heat transfer, fly ash behaviour, and low-emission technologies including oxy-fuel combustion, chemical looping, carbon capture and storage, pulverised coal injection to blast furnaces, coking coal evaluation, and emissions control for sulfur, NOx, and mercury. Key publications include the book 'The Impact of Mineral Impurities in Solid Fuel Combustion' (1999, co-authored with R.P. Gupta and L.L. Baxter), and influential papers such as 'An overview on oxy-fuel coal combustion: State of the art research and technology development' (Chemical Engineering Research and Design, 2009), 'Combustion processes for carbon capture' (Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 2007), and 'Sulphur impacts during pulverised coal combustion in oxy-fuel technology for carbon capture and storage' (Progress in Energy and Combustion Science, 2011). He serves on the editorial boards of Combustion Science and Technology, Fuel, and the IFRF Online Combustion Journal, with a special issue of Fuel dedicated to him in June 2005. His contributions have significantly influenced coal industry practices and environmental controls globally. Major awards include Member of the Order of Australia (AM, 2001) for service to the coal industry and education, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (2002), Percy Nicholls Solid Fuels Award (first Australian recipient), ESSO Award for excellence in Chemical Engineering (1997), Bryers Award (2004), John Chipman Award of the US Iron and Steel Society, Pitt Award for Innovation in Coal Conversion (2003), and Baragwanath Award (2013).