Abstract:
For nearly a century, chemical engineering has been defined and driven by two
fundamental tenets. First, the economy of scale, which dictates that making chemical plants
larger will make their construction more capital-efficient and improve the utilization of resources,
thereby reducing the operating cost and the price of products (while improving profit). Second,
these plants are designed and built using a relatively uniform set of building blocks, i.e., unit
operations.Such large-scale production units are uneconomical for innovative products with a short
lifespan and volatile markets. In this talk I will review several drivers, especially in the Energy
field, for modular production. decentralized, flexible production facilities. and evaluate modular
production architectures based on the value density of feedstock resources and markets for the
products of a process. I hope to motivate the students with exciting challenges and future
directions for this area.
Bio:
Dr. Bhima Sastri is the Director of Energy Asset Transitions in the Office of
Fossil Energy, U.S. Department of Energy. He is currently leading an effort
across several government agencies to repurpose and transition energy
assets to meet administration goals to decarbonize the electric sector and the
economy. In addition, he overlooks R&D funding for other technology areas
including the Supercritical CO2 programs that manages the 10Mwe
Supercritical Transformative Electric Power pilot in San Antonio, TX. Prior to
this he was the Division Director, Crosscutting R&D, where he was responsible
in developing modular power production technologies with the Coal FIRST (Flexible Innovative Resilient
Small and Transformative) program. He has over 30 years of experience in research and development of
chemical and energy technologies. Before joining the Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Office, he
was a Technology Manager at the Advanced Manufacturing Office at DOE where he managed the
Advanced Chemical Separations, Desalination, and Bio-Manufacturing technology portfolios.
He currently serves on the executive board of the RAPID - a Modular Chemical Process
Intensification Institute for Clean Energy Manufacturing - and on the Advisory Boards for Chemical
Engineering, both at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY and Howard University in Washington DC.
For over 18 years prior to joining DOE, he worked in pulp and paper industry as a Senior Research Engineer
and has held visiting faculty positions at different universities where he taught undergraduate chemical
engineering courses.
Dr. Sastri completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy,
NY and a B. Tech. in Chemical Engineering from IIT Madras. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of
Chemical Engineers.