Protein synthesis and conceptual design of chemical process systems. Combining reactions and separations, crystallization of organic materials, and systems with complex chemistries. Applications: specialty chemical and pharmaceuticals.
Separation with chemical reaction. Potential to create quantum improvements in process technology through the enhancement of reactions by separation and by the improvement of separation by reaction. Developing new feasibility methods using geometric techniques such as residue curve maps, bifurcation analysis, and attainable regions. Applications: production of esters and ethers by reactive distillation, and antibiotics by reactive solvent extraction.
Crystallization of organic materials. Study the effect of process design and operation on crystal quality for organic-solids processes. The key measures of quality that we are interested in are, enantiomorph (for chiral mixtures), polymorph, and crystal shape. Developing new methods to account for solution effects, with the ultimate goal of using these new methods to account for crystal shape, as well as enantiomorph and polymorph selection in the conceptual design of solids processes.