Department of Chemical Engineering
Dr. Sreedevi Upadhyayula worked as a Senior Design Engineer for five years in both Public sector (BHPV Ltd., Visakhapatnam, subsidiary of BYNL group) and Private sector (APL, Chennai, subsidiary of PTE, Singapore) after completing her M. Tech in Chemical Engineering (Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemical Technology specialization) from IIT Kharagpur in 1993. She returned to academics in 1998 joining the Catalysis Division of National Chemical Laboratory, Pune as a CSIR Senior Research Fellow. She completed her PhD in 2001 jointly from NCL, Pune and Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. She then worked as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at University of Notre Dame, IN, USA, before joining the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur as an Assistant Professor in January 2004. In April 2006, she joined the Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and currently working as CLASS of 66 Chair Professor. Her research interests include environmentally benign heterogeneous catalysis involving ionic liquids, zeotype materials in Petrochemical and Refinery catalytic processes, biomass conversion to biofuels: Catalyst design, Parametric study, Kinetics and Modeling of heterogeneous reactions.
The Upadhyayula research group engineer efficient and economic catalysts and catalytic processes to advance renewable energy/ fuel and petrochemical technologies while targeting zero GHG emissions. We correlate real-time analytical characterisation of task-specific laboratory synthesized catalysts and their performance data with theoretical reaction models and results from molecular modelling, to fundamentally understand the transient reaction mechanism over catalytic surfaces under operational conditions. This understanding is used to model the reaction kinetics of complex heterogeneous reactions for better reactor design during process scale-up after a detailed techno-economic evaluation of the various process routes. We have successfully delivered industrial projects in collaboration with ADEM, XEMX, SHELL STI, ONGC Energy Centre, Haldor-Topsoe, BPCL R&D Centre, DCM SHRIRAM.
Office: Block I-209, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi-110016, India
Laboratory: Block-I-107 and 108, Heterogenus Catalysis & Reaction Engineering Lab, IIT Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi-110016, India
