Dr. Babu Joseph's Talk

Feb 09, 2017 - 17:00

Feb 09, 2017 - 18:00

Rm. No. 118 Ground floor Chemical Engg. Dept.

Seminars

Dr. Babu Joseph Professor Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering University of South Florida Tampa Florida Visiting Fulbright-Nehru Scholar IIT Bombay

Abstract: CO hydrogenation is one of the technologies used for converting gaseous fuels such as methane to easily transportable high energy density liquid fuels. The technology was developed during second world war by chemists Fischer and Tropsch for converting coal derived syngas ( mixture of CO and H2) to synthetic crude oil. The technology is currently commercial in South Africa. GTL (Gas to Liquid) technology is also used to convert abundant natural gas to liquid fuels in countries like Qatar Malayasia and Nigeria. Recently this technology is being applied to produce renewable liquid fuels from biomass. Iron and cobalt are two of the commonly used metal catalysts for FTS. In this talk I will present some recent results on the synthesis characterization and evaluation of cobalt based catalysts for CO hydrogenation. I will present justification for using an egg-shell morphology to control the product distribution. I will also present some results of experimental studies on CO hydrogenation using egg-shell cobalt catalysts. In the second part of the talk I will present some insights into the FTS reaction mechanisms using electronic structure calculations based on Density Functional Theory (DFT). The effect of Pt as a promoter and its impact on catalyst deactivation by carbon deposition will also be discussed.Brief Biography Dr. Joseph graduated from IIT Kanpur with B. Tech (Silver Medalist) in ChE and obtained his MS and Ph.D. in ChE from Case Western Reserve University. He then joined the Energy Lab at MIT where he worked on the development of ASPEN Simulator. He joined the faculty of Chemical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis in 1978 where he became the Edward C. Dicke Professor in 2000. In 2002 he moved to become Chair of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at USF. He is the author of two books (Real Time Personal Computing 1989 and Techniques of Model Based Control 2002) one edited volume (Wavelet Applications 1996) and over 200 technical publications. During the year 1985-86 he was visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He is founder and VP for Research at T2C-Energy LLC. a small business working on commercializing technology for converting landfill gas to diesel and jet fuel. Website: http://www.eng.usf.edu/~bjoseph/ Attendance is compulsory for CL702 and CL704 students.