Undergraduate Research

BTech Project

I finished my undergraduate studies at Indian Institute of Technology from where i obtained my BTech degree in Chemical Engineering. My BTech advisor was Dr. Raghunathan Rengaswamy . My BTech Project was titled Design of a Multi Purpose Simulator-MPROSIM .

Simulation has emerged as an important tool for both the process as well as research engineer. A simulation tool can not only help a process engineer in gaining insight and conducting various studies with the model, but also provide guidance to the research engineer in the design and development of new processes thereby reducing both time and capital investment.

Keeping these objectives in mind, MPROSIM, which is an Object Oriented application with a Graphical User Interface (GUI), in Java, which allows the user to conveniently represent any flowsheet and then analyze it was developed. Our basic aim was to develop a state of the art tool that acn be used both for industry and in house research. The analysis tools presently available are Steady state Simulation, Parameter Estimation, FCCU Modeling, Linear and Bilinear Data Reconciliation and active research is still going on in the Prociss lab at clarkson university under the guidance of Prof RR. The Simulation and Parameter Estimation tasks are being performed in an integrated manner by the use of both Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) and Newtons Raphsons Method. The GUI is very similar to those found in other commercial Simulators such as ASPEN, Design 2 etc. A case study of an object-oriented framework for automatic generation of FCC reactor/regenerator models using MPROSIM has been developed.

Equipped with the model of the FCC reactor/regenerator in MPROSIM framework, several simulation studies were carried with the reactor, regenerator and the integrated reactor/ regenerator flowsheet to tune the model to represent the commercial plant data. In a joint project of Foxboro-chennai, MRL and IITB, we got an oppurtinity to use this Simulator package for their FCCU simulation which we performed successfully. I am grateful to all the PROCISS Group Members for the support given during my research.

Industrial Project, Dec 99 - : Madras Refineries Limited (MRL) and Foxboro India Limited .

For the validation of the Simulator designed during the senior year thesis I would be simulating the FCCU of MRL under a Joint IIT-MRL-Foxboro Collaboration. I would be using the actual plant data provided by them.

Junior year thesis (Jan-Apr 99): Production of Pharmaceutical particles with the use of Supercritical Fluids. Guide: Prof. Sandip Roy

It involved extensive literature survey on the use of supercritical fluids in the production of pharmaceutical particles. The RESS and the GAS methods were extensively studied.

Commercial Software Development:

I am part of a team which is designing a potentially commercial software, ESPRO , for "Property Estimation of Thermodynamic properties for Organic Compounds". It is an Object Oriented application which serves as a guide to calculate a large number of Thermophysical properties for both pure compounds and mixtures. It has its kernel in C/C++. Initially the GUI was developed in TCL/TK but on seeing the market demand for Java products it was reprogrammed in Java.

Project in Practical Training (May-Jul 99):

"Design of a Fin type Heat Exchanger for Waste water recovery at Godrej Soaps Ltd, a premier soap manufacturing industry in India. In the project a heat exchanger was to be designed to trap the hot air coming out of the sulphonation plant at Godrej Soaps Ltd., and to use it as a source to produce steam as a hot utility. In this project I was teamed with a group of exchange students from MIT and the design was successfully completed.

Database Management (May-Jul 97): Database Management at the CAD Center.

This involved the development of software in FORTRAN. Work involved was to link all the given chemical engineering data and the functions which is still widely used in many renowned firms like IPCL, NOCIL, HOCL, etc. The data and the functions were originally written in NORSK's fashion which is known to the NORSK machines, which are become obsolete now.

Process Equipment Design Project(Jan-Aprl 99):

In this project an existing PID controller was replaced with a Fuzzy Logic based controller. The data for design was taken from a model that was defined in literature and DIVPAG was used as the integrator.

Design of a Level Controller(Aug-Nov 99):

In this project modelling, simulation and tuning of a Level Controller was done. Experimental data was used for the modelling and Simulation and tuning was done using Matlab (Simulink).

FORTRAN Language Course Project(Jul-Nov 96):

In this Course Project a "Text Editor " was designed in FORTRAN.