Making new industrial installations safe to people and the environment may amount up to to 80 % of the overall cost of a new plant. Professor Dlugogorski leads a research group that is developing new technologies that improve safety of industrial processes, at lower cost, with less impact on the environment, which are intrinsically less energy and feedstock intensive, and their operations can be incorporated in the new circular economy.
For example, Professor Dlugogorski’s research group develops firefighting foams that are effective against industrial fires but do not contain fluorosurfactants.
The group also studies the formation and mitigation of pollutants from thermal processes, such as NOx in detonations and brominated dioxins from recycling of plastics containing brominated flame retardants.
While lithium serves as a key component in batteries for energy storage, supporting the transition away from the combustion-based technologies, processing of lithium ores consumes large amounts of energy and feedstocks, and generates byproducts that are difficult to recycle. New technologies are urgently needed to redress this situation.
Professor Dlugogorski has supervised or co-supervised to completion more than 50 PhD candidates. Among his former PhD candidates, 14 are now academics in Australia, China, Indonesia, Mozambique, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and United Arab Emirates.
In September 2019, Bogdan was awarded the 2020 Howard Emmons Invited Plenary Lectureship. The Emmons Lectureship is a prestigious recognition of distinguished career achievement in fire science and engineering awarded by the IAFSS once every three years at its International Symposia on Fire Safety Science.
Professor Dlugogorski is a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered Chemist with a distinguished record as a researcher, inventor and academic leader.
He holds a DSc in Fire Safety Science and Engineering (Newcastle), PhD and MEng in Chemical Engineering (Montreal, McGill), and undergraduate degrees in Chemical Engineering and Geophysics (Calgary).
Professor Dlugogorski is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, Combustion Institute, Society of Fire Protection Engineers, Engineers Australia and Royal Australian Chemical Institute.
He is a former Chairman of International Association for Fire Safety Science.