With the current population growth rate and changing life style, the demand for energy is ever increasing. Motivated by these societal needs, environmental concerns and sustainability, I focused my research in the field of Flow Assurance, Petroleum Refining, Fuels and Biofuels. I believe that theory, experimentation as well as modeling and simulation should go hand-in-hand to address a research problem.
My work on transportation of crude oil through deep water pipelines involves the study of energy efficient magnetic conditioning method for viscosity reduction of crude oil. The method is found to be 105 times cheaper than the presently used chemical methods. He has also developed a model for viscosity reduction prediction and further proposes to enhance the same.
The other problem lies in processing heavy crude and high sulphur crude. This also leads to pollution problems on combustion front unless advanced technologies are implemented. These factors lead to the search of a substitute for the conventional energy sources. I thus got interested in the research of biofuels. Prediction of biodiesel- diesel blend properties is a complicated task. I along with my other colleagues have developed a generalized model for prediction of important fuel properties of biodiesel – diesel mixture. The simple model can be utilized to predict the blending proportions of biodiesel with petro-based diesel in order to meet ASTM specification of the blended fuel.
I am proud of my publications in high impact factor journals like Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research (IECR) and Fuel. I have got a research funding of Rs.2.75 lakhs till date from SPPU, Pune and ONGC Chair Program of ONGC Ltd. I have professional memberships of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers which help me to keep abreast of the latest industrial and research trends.