Computational Gas-Solids Flows and Reacting Systems: Theory, Methods and Practice

Sreekanth Pannala is a senior research staff member in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He received his M.S. (1994) and Ph.D. (2000) in Aerospace Engineering specializing in the area of computational combustion of two-phase flows from Georgia Tech. His expertise is primarily in the area of developing parallel algorithms and models for heterogeneous chemically reacting flows from device to micro scale. He received Federal Laboratory Technology Transfer award in 2006 and R&D 100 award in 2007 for his contribution to the development of MFIX (http://mfix.netl.doe.gov), an open-source multiphase flow simulation suite. He has served as a principal investigator on various DOE computational science projects and has over 75 conference and technical publications in various areas of computational science and engineering.

Madhava Syamlal is Focus Area Leader of Computational and Basic Sciences at National Energy Technology Laboratory, where he is responsible for using computational science to accelerate the development of advanced energy systems. He earned a B.Tech in chemical engineering from IT-BHU (1977) and an M.S. (1981) and a Ph.D. (1985) in chemical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology. He has led the development of the open source multiphase flow code MFIX and the integration CFD and process simulation, both of which have won R&D 100 awards. In 2009 he received the PTF Fluidization Process Recognition award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Thomas J. O’Brien has been a Research Scientist at the NETL since 1979. He obtained a B.S. in chemistry from the College of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN) in 1962, a Ph.D. in Physical/Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin (Madison) in 1968, has held postdoctoral positions at The Queen’s University (Belfast, Northern Ireland) and The Johns Hopkins University, and has been a National Research Council Associate (U. S. Army Ballistics Research Laboratory). He was an Assistant Professor in the Chemistry Department at Texas Tech University (Lubbock, TX) from 1969-79.Most of Dr. O’Brien’s research efforts at NETL have been in developing mechanistic mathematical models for coal conversion processes.