Biography

Pratik Desai is the R&I Director of Perlemax Ltd., MEng (1st hons) Chemical Engineering w Fuel technology, PhD in Chemical Engineering. He has expertise in microbubble generation, fluidics, is a co-inventor of Desai-Zimmerman Fluidic Oscillator (for generating microbubbles), and has led pioneering work on hot microbubble injection in thin liquid layers including scale up. Pratik has extensive experience in microbubble generation, visualisation, fluid dynamics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics and associated phenomena, fluidics and reaction catalysis. He has worked on/working on lab scale and scale up of 5 different pilot plant processes developing several new technologies. He has designed disruptive solutions to conventional unit operations (microbubble distiller/condenser, microbubble stripper, and microbubble sorption) and translated them from blue-sky research ideas to POC and pilot scale within 2 years. He has also managed several projects and led technical innovations including implementation of microbubbles for ammonia-water- carbon dioxide reaction dynamics and catalysis, bioethanol production and separation, bioreactor design, bagged microbial reactors, fermenters, aquaculture, anaerobic digestion enhancement, foam dynamics, CO2 capture and sequestration–with Ionic liquids, MEA, and mineral carbonation, biodiesel production, micro/nanobubble drug delivery and WWA-self actuated wastewater aeration unit. He has also worked on microbial and algal based engineered communities in order to selectively uptake heavy metal ions from waste streams as well as algal growth and bioreactor development. Following on that, he is working on the ‘Waste Factory’- a concept developed by him and Professor Zimmerman which works towards a cascading circular economy approach in order to remediate waste and generate products; converting liabilities and remediating the waste streams into valorised products and energy-‘Waste Factory’-DZ MMARP. He has demonstrated each process in this cycle on the lab scale as a PoC and is leading a £3.7Mn application with academic and industrial partners in the UK and India. He is sole inventor of an energy efficient micro/nanodroplet generation method and a novel gas enrichment processing solution. He is lead technologist/lead/co-lead on grants/projects totalling £5.9Mn (overall £12.8Mn). He has successfully run an internship scheme with over 118 interns comprising of assistant professors, postdoctoral researchers, doctoral candidates, process engineers, M level, and UG students from across the world. He has consulted/consulting over 35 industrial collaborators/industrial projects. He was a finalist for the IChemE Global Awards 2017 for the Young Researcher Award.

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Research Interest

Biofuels, Biodiesel and Bioethanol