The inaugural Asia Turbomachinery and Pump Symposium (ATPS), organized by the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s Turbomachinery Laboratory, debuted Feb. 22-26, 2016, at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, Asia’s market center.
The event serves as an ideal training and networking opportunity for professionals in both turbomachinery and pump industries, building on the outstanding success of the longstanding Turbomachinery and Pump Symposia, held annually in Houston, Texas. The success of ATPS 2016 notably marks the Turbo Lab’s largest foray into Asia, with more than 900 individuals in attendance, 42 companies in 67 booths, 90 hand-selected technical sessions, and plans for an ATPS 2018 already underway.
ATPS 2016’s technical program, presented by engineers and selected by an advisory committee of industry experts, included topics such as maintenance, design and troubleshooting, as well as case studies describing in-the-field problems and their real-world solutions. The extensive program featured 24 case studies, 16 lectures, 10 short courses, 6 technical briefs, 22 tutorials and 12 discussion groups, for a total of 90 sessions.
By attending all or part of the sessions, working engineers earned continuing education credit. The technical program is neatly coupled with a cutting-edge exhibit hall with booths of leading companies from the oil and gas, petrochemical, power, pumping and turbomachinery industries. Exhibitors and attendees from 38 countries networked within the Marina Bay Sands Exhibit Hall A.
From its inception, ATPS was met with great enthusiasm, receiving considerable financial, academic and partnering support from a diverse array of institutions including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, Elliott Group Ebara Corp., the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, the Korea Rotating Machinery Engineers Association, the Singapore Workforce Development Agency, the Singapore Exhibition and Convention Bureau, and the Gas Turbine Users Forum.
“Much needed in the region, ATPS has established a vital forum for interchange of ideas among USERs, OEMs and service providers,” said Dr. Luis San Andrés, ATPS Advisory Committee chairman and Turbo Lab associate director. “There is an obvious interest in the engineering community in the knowledge provided by the ATPS program content and in the interactive forum of ATPS.”
Since the close of ATPS 2016, the enthusiasm has not diminished. On the contrary, plans for a stand-alone technical program in Singapore 2017 are currently under discussion, and ATPS 2018 is already confirmed with planning underway.