I joined as Professor of Practice in the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur with 3 decades of experience in downstream Oil and Gas Sector. My office is located in the Chemical Engineering Department Annex building(Room No 322). The research team aims to carry out kinetic and Hydrodynamic modelling, use Process simulation packages and experiments to undertake the research work in the Industry relevance problem(s).

In the context of Global Energy transition and net zero commitment by several countries across the globe including India, the area of the research team are:

(1)Advances in Petroleum Refining
Fixed bed refining processes (Hydroprocessing) and Catalytic Cracking Processes (FCC and Petro FCC) are the two main workhorse in the petroleum refining. Areas of research are kinetics, catalysts and simulation & optimization of the processes being in modern Refinery.

(2)Sustainable Processes and Bio Refining
Study kinetics of the processes that use renewable resources (such as biomass or waste materials) to produce energy incluidng bio-refining followed by optimization and design.

(3)Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU)
Capturing CO2 emissions from industrial processes & power plants and utilization strategies for converting CO2 into useful products.

(4)Process Simulation and Modeling
Use of steady state simulation packages and process modeling of chemical processes and energy systems to predict performance, assess environmental impacts and efficiency improvement.
 
(5)Scale-up and Commercialization
Scale-up is the critical step in the journey of concept to Commercialization of any new process or product. Spearheaded commercialization of more than 15 Processes and Products Technologies in Oil & Gas sector which are in operational in several refineries in India. Interested to undertake scale-up studies of processes and products.

Interested students and scholars are highly encouraged to contact me at saum@che.iitkgp.ac.in for more details regarding the available projects.

We are open to collaborations within academia, research labs and industries