Udaya Bhaskar Reddy Ragula

Biography

Dr. Udaya joined as a faculty at Amrita in 2011. He finished his Ph. D. from Florida USA in 2010. Prior to obtaining his doctoral degree, Dr. Udaya worked as a Research Specialist at AKZO NOBEL Coatings, Bangalore, India. He worked on projects funded by Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Energy (DoE) USA. During his doctoral studies, he also worked as a consultant for RENTECH Clean Energy Solutions, Colorado, USA for separating sub-micron catalyst particles from wax-catalyst slurry. Dr. Udaya has expertise in Reaction Engineering (Especially microreactor design and fabrication), Solid-Fluid Separations, Process Modeling, Simulation and Control. He has two Patents on Microchannel Reactors. He also Designed, Modeled and Simulated a DYNAMIC Settler for RENTECH.

Research Interest

Primary research focus of the group is to study the kinetics in small reactors, reactor design, process models for chemical reactors and model based control. Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Microchannel rectors gained importance in recent years due to high surface-to-volume ratios available for heat transfer. These reactors are of great importance when a high selectivity of products is required such as in Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. An integrated microchannel reactor has been designed and developed at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham having a sensible heat transfer co-efficient of 5000 W/(m2. K), which is 50 times higher when compared to the conventional reactors. Deposition of catalysts onto microchannels is another challenge. We are preparing catalysts such as cobalt Fischer-Tropsch catalyst, Pt-Sn catalyst for paraffin dehydrogenation, and mixed-oxide catalysts for Biomass and Coal gasification. We are also studying the kinetics of oxide complexation in multi-phase reactors such as Cement rotary kilns using in situ radioisotope particle tracking. Process Modeling and Simulation A process model gives an edge over experiments in terms of cost and information availability but limited to real situations even under similar conditions. From modeling and simulation, we are able to simulate the heat and mass transfer, and reaction rates. The Process Modeling and Simulation group works on modeling and simulation of paraffin dehydrogenation, biomass gasification and pyrolysis, cement rotary kilns, and microchannel reactor stack. We are developing General Reactor Modeling (GRM) Software to facilitate every reaction engineer to simulate different kind of reactors available in the chemical reactor supermarket. Flow Dynamics and Control Process control is very important for chemical engineers where the variables such as temperature, pressure and concentration are controlled using manipulated variables. We are currently working on model-based control of interacting systems for liquid level and temperature control. We are also working on interface tracking for drop-to-drop collisions using imaging techniques.