Course Director: Professor Stuart Scott
Professor Scott’s research is focused primarily on carbon capture and other processes for the abatement of CO2. This includes detailed investigations into specific technologies, with a large effort on processes which are based on gasification, combustion and thermochemical cycles, as well as more general process and reactor modelling and sustainability assessment. Recent work has looked at combined gasification and metal oxygen donor processes (often called chemical looping combustion), in which the oxygen for combustion comes from a solid oxygen carrier (usually a metal oxide) rather than air. Professor Scott's research in this area goes from the understanding and development of the materials, through to lab-scale testing and process modelling of the scaled up systems. He also works on the modelling of carbon abatement technologies, from the reactor scale through to the process flow sheet and the wider system scale. This has led to work on Lifecycle Assessment of Biofuels, including those which make use of novel biological systems (i.e. algae).
Professor Scott runs the ET-A2 course together with
Course Manager: Dr Fiona Smail
Fiona completed her PhD in Chemistry at the University of Nottingham, under Professor Martyn Poliakoff before moving to a research position within the Chemical Industry where she worked for 9 years. She returned to academia in 2009, joining the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy before moving to the Department of Engineering in 2013 as an embedded researcher. She commenced her postdoctoral work on the ANAM project in 2015.
Fiona has a strong interest in practical technology transfer, driven by the interaction between universities and industry. This started with her PhD in Nottingham where she helped develop the first continuous flow supercritical fluids reactor. Fiona moved to an industrial position to help implement the full continuous phase supercritical plant in 2001. A move across to academia in 2009 commenced her involvement in the CNT fibre spinning process which was based in the Department of Materials Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge. Fiona helped implement the successful transfer of this technology to Tortech Nano Fibers Ltd who commissioned their process in 2011. Fiona transferred to the Department of Engineering as an embedded researcher in 2013 to work with Adam Boies research group, bringing together her knowledge of the fibre spinning process with their aerosol particle expertise and went on to join the ANAM project in 2015.
Since September 2021 she has been Course Manager for the MPhil in Energy Technologies.
Professor Nedunchezhian Swaminathan
Professor Swaminathan is another combustion expert and his research is in predicting the characteristics, such as heat release rate distribution, pollutants formation, combustion instabilities, etc., of fuel-lean combustion in gas turbine and IC engine conditions.
Professor Swaminathan is Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He is also a Fellow and Director of Studies at Robinson College. His research is focused on carbon capture and storage, combustion modelling and physics, and the impact of combustion on the environment. His other interests include photography, gardening and carpentry.
Professor Swaminathan runs the Solar and Biomass core module in Renewable Energy ET-B3 together with
Dr Tzia Ming Onn
Dr Shreyas Mandre
Dr Bob Skelton will be giving lectures on the safety aspects of working in the energy sector.
Lecture courses are also given by post-doctoral teaching staff and we offer teaching assistance through PhD students and former alumni of the course.