Peter Englezos
Professor
peter.englezos@ubc.ca
Home department: Chemical and Biological Engineering
Research Interests
- Clathrate (Gas) Hydrates: Thermodynamics, Kinetics, and Impact on Climate Change and Technological Applications
- Optimization and Machine Learning in Process Engineering
Current Research Project
- Clathrate (gas) hydrates: fundamentals and applications: Clathrate or gas hydrates are non-stoichiometric crystalline inclusion compounds formed by water and over one hundred other molecules at suitable temperature and pressure conditions. We have over 30 years of experience in this field and made important contributions to understanding of their phase behaviour and the kinetics of formation and dissociation. We have utilized this fundamental knowledge to contribute to technological innovations such as the hydrate-based gas separations with applications to carbon dioxide capture. Other areas include the elucidation of the way in which antifreeze proteins inhibit hydrate crystal growth. We have also advanced our knowledge of the positive feedback processes to climate change due the uncontrolled dissociation of the earth’s methane hydrates.
- Optimization and machine learning in process engineering: In the past 30 years we have developed nonlinear optimization methods for parameter estimation in various fields of chemical engineering. This work is mainly based on the use of phenomenological models and the matching of these models with experimental data to extract parameter values and their statistical properties. The recent advances in computer processing speed and information storage density are increasingly exploited to extract patterns of behaviour from large experimental datasets using machine learning. We are also interested in evolving machine learning as a modelling approach for physical and chemical systems of interest in chemical engineering.