Supervisors and Research Projects

Supervisors and Research Projects

The members of staff below can offer PhD supervision for projects in specific areas of energy research.

Professor Dermot Roddy

Professor Dermot Roddy is Director of the Swan Centre and also the Science City Professor of Energy, with a broad-based role in translational research across the energy sector.  The aim of Science City is to initiate research in new areas which, if successful, is capable of being deployed by the large and growing energy industry in North East England and beyond.  He has a strong industrial background in oil refining, low-carbon fuels, clean use of fossil fuels and hydrogen.  Opportunities for PhD research are anticipated in such fields as: harnessing the gases arising from Underground Coal Gasification; novel biofuels; converting biomass into low-carbon fuels and feedstocks; and a range of broader-based clean and renewable energy topics with strong industrial links.

Professor Tony Roskilly

Professor Roskilly is Dean of Research in the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering, Chair of Marine Engineering, and Deputy Director of the Sir Joseph Swan Centre for Energy Research. He has long research experience and has supervised numerous research students in areas of energy systems, thermal power, and control engineering. Specific research projects available at present include:

  1. Application of biofuels, hydrogen, and other alternative fuel use in power plants.
  2. Combined heat and power and trigeneration systems.
  3. Development of the free-piston engine concept.
  4. Development of the reciprocating Joule cycle engine concept.

For details on these and other projects, please see Professor Roskilly's web profile http://www.ncl.ac.uk/energy/people/profile/tony.roskilly.

Dr Yaodong Wang

Dr Yaodong Wang is a Lecturer and also the Director of Postgraduate Studies for the Swan Centre. He has a long history of research experience in areas of energy systems including: thermal power plants; co-generation and trigeneration; biomass combustion; coal and biomass co-combustion; gasification; waste heat driven absorption refrigeration; engine performance and emission control.

For details on these and other projects, please see Dr Yaodong Wang’s web profile: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/energy/people/profile/y.d.wang

Professsor Ian Metcalfe, CPI Professor of Chemical Engineering

Ian Metcalfe graduated from Imperial College, where he was the holder of a Royal Scholarship, with first class honours in chemical engineering in 1982. He was the recipient of the Hinchley Medal for the top undergraduate in chemical engineering in that year. He went on to do an MA and PhD in Chemical Engineering at Princeton University.  Metcalfe returned to the UK as a lecturer at Imperial College. While at Imperial College he was the recipient of both an Esso Education Fellowship (1989-92) and an ICI Fellowship (1993-98).  In 1996 he was awarded the Imperial College Award for Excellence in Teaching and in the same year was promoted to senior lecturer. In 1997 he moved to the University of Edinburgh as Professor of Chemical Engineering and four years later he moved to UMIST (later Manchester) as Professor of Chemical Engineering. In 2001 he was appointed Executive Editor for Chemical Engineering Science, one of the most prestigious journals in the field of chemical engineering.  In 2005 he joined the School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials at Newcastle University where he is the CPI Professor of Chemical Engineering. Professor Metcalfe's work is primarily in the area of catalyst kinetics.  In particular he is interested in metal-support interactions in oxide-supported metal systems. He has published over 100 refereed papers including seminal papers on the mechanism and kinetics of catalyst promotion and is the author of a text book in the area of kinetics and reaction engineering. He has supervised more than 30 PhD students.  He is a Chartered Chemist and a Chartered Engineer as well as being a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers.

Specific research projects:

1. Clean energy generation with CO2 capture

The ever increasing need to minimise CO2 emissions is placing pressure on energy producers to develop long-term solutions. Existing processes need to become more efficient while new, sustainable processes need to be developed. The use of a revolutionary hollow fibre membrane reactor for simultaneous oxygen separation and hydrocarbon combustion enables pure CO2 to be captured for storage in depleted oil field cavities or used as a feed stock in chemical production. This project will involve the optimisation of such technology prior to scaling up for commercial application.

2. Ultra-pure hydrogen production

In 2003, the UK government announced the intention to reduce the country’s CO2 emissions by 60% by 2050. The transition towards a hydrogen-based economy is a very attractive solution since hydrogen is considered to be a clean fuel. Hydrogen is not readily available, unlike fossil fuels, and it is currently produced mainly by steam reforming of natural gas. This hydrogen is then mixed with other reaction products (namely CO) and a costly and difficult separation process is required in order to purify the hydrogen at levels acceptable for use in fuel cells. A cleaner and more cost effective method for hydrogen production is now required. The use of perm-selective membrane reactors is an attractive route towards the production of ultra-pure hydrogen and Newcastle has great expertise in this technology. This project involves the development of a novel ceramic membrane reactor for ultra-pure hydrogen production in a low-cost and energy-efficient process. This may be used as a hydrogen-separation unit at the outlet of an existing hydrogen production unit (e.g. a bio-gasification process) or as an “all-in-one” ultra-pure-hydrogen production from some other chemical feedstock.

 

 

For more information on any of these projects please contact the member of staff concerned directly.

These are not the only areas of research which can be supervised by members of the Swan Centre. A full list of staff by research theme can be found at People by Research Theme.

If you would like more information on postgraduate study within the Swan Centre, please contact us.