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Education: B.E. (Hons) Chemical Engineering, 1997, BITS (Pilani)
M.E. Chemical Engineering, 2000, BITS (Pilani) CGPA=
10/10
Ph.D. Chemical Engineering, 2005, IIT Bombay
Post-Doc, Chemical Engineering, Princeton University, Feb 2005 - May 2007
Patents:
U.S. patent (no: 20060282343) entitled 'Paper manufacturing system and method' filed on May 05, 2005.
The work was part of a sponsored research project of Honeywell Technology
Solutions Laboratory,
Bangalore, undertaken at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay during his doctoral work.
Reviewing:
Reviewer for AIChE Journal, Computers & Chemical Engineering, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry
Research, Optimization letters, Indian Chemical Engineers, and Energy & Fuels.
Reviewer for 4th International Symposium for Advanced Control of Industrial Processes (ADCONIP 2011), 23-26 May 2011, China.
Reviewer for 19th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED 2011). 20-23 June 2011, Greece.
Member, International Program Committee, 11th International Symposium on Process Systems Engineering (PSE 2012), 15-19 July 2012, Singapore.
Ph.D.thesis review and examiner at Dharmsinh Desai University (DDU), Nadiad, Dec 2008.
Ph.D.thesis review and examiner at Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, July 2010.
Industrial Experience: Graduate Engineer Trainee from 8 July 1997 – 2 Aug 1998 at Gas Authority of
India Ltd. (GAIL), Uttar Pradesh Petrochemical Complex (U.P.P.C.),
Pata,
Aurriyya, Uttar Pradesh, India. Worked in commissioning of Gas Cracker Unit
capable of producing of 400,000 tons per annum of polymer grade ethylene. My
responsibilities included: pre-commissioning and commissioning activities of
the Gas Cracker Unit;pre-commissioning of ethylene refrigeration system,
cooling water system,
chemical cleaning of furnaces, target plate blowing of
steam turbine inlet, yard piping; Commissioning of cracking furnaces, furnace
refractory dry out, turbine solo run,
coupled run of compressors in the field
as well as on DCS.
Teaching Experience: Teaching Assistant, from 5 Aug 1998 – 15 Jul 2000 in Chemical Engineering Group
at
Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, - 333 031, Rajasthan, India.
The role of a teaching assistant at BITS, Pilani is different from that of
other
institutions. It involves full-term independent teaching responsibility
including teaching and grading, and working part time towards earning a
Master’s degree. I was
responsible for the following while I completed M.E.
(Chemical): (i)Teaching and grading the undergraduate (UG) course
Thermodynamics for three semesters, twice on-campus and
once off-campus (as
part of Distance Learning Program). (ii) Lab supervision: heat and mass
transfer lab, unit operations lab. (iii) Administration of practice school-I
(where UG students spend one summer working in an industry) in two companies at
Chennai during the summer of 1999.
Assistant Professor, since 25 June 2007 at Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Delhi.
Research Experience: Research Assistant from 21 July 2000 – 7 Feb 2005 in Dept. of Chemical
Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai - 400 076,
Maharashtra, India. The following assignments have been performed along with
working towards my Ph.D. degree: (i) Worked as a system administrator at the
departmental
student computer room, (ii) Played lead role in successfully
completing the consultancy project works: Lube Oil Scheduler Application,
Tobacco Plant Capacity Optimization, and
Advanced Planning and Scheduling in
Paper Mills.
Post-doctoral Experience: Post-Doctoral Research Associate from 16 Feb 2005 to 31 May 2007 with Prof.
Christodoulos A. Floudas, in Dept. of Chemical Engineering,
Princeton
University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA. I was involved in the following
research works:(i) Worked on a consultancy project of BASF Chemical Company,
Germany, undertaken by Prof. C.A. Floudas at Princeton University. The work
involved model development (MILP) and optimization (on GAMS software) for
short-term and
medium-term scheduling of a large-scale industrial polymer
compounding plant. (ii) Research in short-term scheduling of batch and
continuous processes using unit-specific
event- based continuous-time
formulations and extensions to accurately handle storage requirements and to
improve the computational performance. (iii) Comparative study of
different
continuous-time models for short-term scheduling of multipurpose batch plants.
Ph.D. Thesis: “Multi-level Decomposition based Approaches to Integrated Planning and Scheduling”,
Supervisor: Prof. Ravindra D. Gudi, Indian Institute of Technology
Bombay, India.
Abstract: Development of methods for integration of planning and scheduling
have received momentous attention in the recent past, because of the challenges
and the high economic incentives involved. In this thesis, an integrated
multi-level, control-theoretic framework has been proposed for effectively
handling integration of
planning, scheduling and rescheduling. The overall
problem of integrated planning and scheduling is logically partitioned into
several levels with the motivation derived from
the hierarchical systems. The
upper level models are equipped with appropriate abstractions of the lower
level constraints. Also from a reactive scheduling view point, various
pro-active measures are embedded into the multi-level structure. One of the key
features of the proposed framework is the integration of reactive scheduling
that is
motivated by some of the process control principles like
cascade-control and the concepts of receding-horizon. The proposed framework is
developed for a generic resource
constrained multi-product hybrid flowshop
facility, comprising several machines operating in serial and parallel
configurations. The proposed framework and the novelties of
the formulations
are demonstrated on single-site and multi-site plant case studies. The proposed
models are implemented on GAMS and ILOG modeling environments. Also, a hybrid
method of stochastic and deterministic approaches has been explored for global
solutions of MINLP problems based on nonlinear transformation of binary
variables to
continuous variables.
M.E. Dissertation: “Expert Systems for the Optimal Design of Heat Exchangers”
Supervisor: Prof. B. V. Babu, Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, India.
Abstract: The main objective in any heat exchanger design is the estimation of
minimum heat transfer area required for a given heat duty, as it governs the
overall
cost of the heat exchanger. However, numerous design configurations are
possible for variations in the design parameters such as tube outer diameter,
pitch and length of
tubes, number of tube passes, baffle spacing, baffle cut,
shell head type etc. Hence, in the literature the heat exchanger design problem
has been identified as a large-scale,
discrete, multivariable combinatorial
optimization problem. In this work, expert systems such as Simulated Annealing,
Genetic Algorithms and Differential Evolution are applied
and evaluated for the
optimal design of shell-and-tube heat exchangers. It was found that
Differential Evolution, an exceptionally simple evolution strategy, is
significantly faster compared to other methods and yields the global optimum
for a wide range of its key parameters.
B.E. Project: “Kinetics Determination and Optimal Reactor Design for Effluent Treatment in PTA Plants”
Supervisor: Dr. C. B. Chidambara Raj, Southern Petrochemical
Industries Corporation Ltd, Tuticorin, India.
Abstract: In this project, kinetics determination and bioreactor design for
effluent treatment of Purified Terephthalic Acid
(PTA) Plants was carried out.
Kinetic parameters: Monod constant and maximum specific growth rate were
determined from batch experiments of biodegradation reaction carried out
on the
mixed effluent from PTA plants, using a batch culture. Using the Monod kinetic
model, the optimal combination of the series of continuous stirred tank
reactors
(CSTRs), for reducing the specified substrate concentration to confirm
to the pollution norms, was found to be three bioreactors, using a simulation
program. The simulation
results were found to be in good agreement with the
experiments. The work concluded with the study of design variations due to pH
changes.
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