| Affiliations: | |
| Project Leader: | Jianping Li ljptamu@tamu.edu Chemical Engineering |
| Faculty Mentor: | Faruque Hasan, Ph.D. |
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Meeting Times:
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Spring 2017: TBD |
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Team Size:
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0 (Team Full) |
| Open Spots: | 0 |
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Special Opportunities:
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Potential for attending undergraduate student research conferences and co-authorship; Access to some of resources in the Research lab. |
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Team Needs:
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Students majoring in Chemical Engineering, Computer Engineering or having any background in mathematical modeling are encouraged to join us. Fundamental knowledge in mass transfer operations. |
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Description:
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Nowadays, the grand challenges related with energy and environment are mainly classified as: 1) energy security and increasing energy demand, 2) generation of sustainable energy. Among all the options to address the challenges, process intensification is becoming a promising alternative and brings about technical revolution through significant reduction in energy consumption, waste generation and environmental impact. Process intensification enables “multi-tasking” by combining reaction, separation and other operations in a single unit, and leads to a substantially smaller, cleaner, safer, and more energy-efficient technology. The role of process intensification is like the role of X-men, both of which are powerful in achieving people’s expectation. In our proposed framework, we are utilizing optimization technique and building the mathematical model by breaking the classical unit operations into more fundamental level of physiochemical phenomena such as reaction, vapor-liquid phase contact. This allows us to better grasp the nature of equipment and include more process alternatives including membrane reactor, absorption, et.al. The proposed framework has been utilized to investigate a lot of industrial examples. In this project, we would specifically focus on the application of the proposed framework on water network synthesis (the fundamental question would be how we are able to manage and plan for the water resources in chemical plants in order to save water resources and reduce environmental pollution). Hopefully, we are also able to realize simultaneous design of water network and heat utilization network (how to obtain the best production route that could save resources and energy). |