Prof Suresh Bhatia
Professor Suresh Bhatia
s.bhatia@uq.edu.au
+61 7 336 54263
School of Chemical Engineering
The University of Queensland
St Lucia, 4072
BIOGRAPHY
Suresh Bhatia is a Professor at the UQ School of Chemical Engineering and leads the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Group within the school. Since January 2010 he holds an Australian Professorial Fellowship from the Australian Research Council. His formal qualifications include BTech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and his Master’s and PhD degree from the University of Pennsylvania, USA.
Prof Bhatia’s main research interests are in adsorption and transport in nanoporous materials and in heterogeneous reaction engineering, where he has authored over 180 scientific papers in leading international journals. He has received numerous awards for his research, including the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Engineering Sciences from the Government of India, and the ExxonMobil Award for Excellence in Chemical Engineering in 2009. He is a Fellow of the IChemE, and is the Regional Editor of the international journal Molecular Simulation. He has held visiting positions at the University of Florida, the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and the Technical University of Denmark.
RESEARCH
Prof Bhatia’s main research interests are in adsorption and transport in nanoporous materials, with an emphasis on molecular modelling for characterisation and transport property prediction, and in heterogeneous reaction engineering. Among the recent developments from his group is a novel density functional theory approach that characterises carbons in terms of a combination of pore wall thickness and pore size distributions, thereby overcoming key weaknesses of the existing method. In addition, they have developed powerful new techniques for characterising microstructural accessibility of carbons based on molecular models of the structure. Most recently, they have proposed new theories for prediction of transport properties of simple gases in nanopores.
TEACHING AND LEARNING
Prof Bhatia has taught a variety of courses in chemical engineering, including Chemical Reaction Engineering and Thermodynamics, at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and for several years coordinated the undergraduate research thesis course.
PROJECTS
1. Catalytic conversion of waste plastics to liquid fuels
2. Molecular modelling of carbon nanostructure and confined fluids
3. Dynamics of adsorption in nanoporous materials
4. Adsorption of carbon dioxide and methane in carbons in the presence of moisture
KEY PUBLICATIONS
1. Nguyen, T.X., H. Jobic and S.K. Bhatia, Microscopic Observation of Kinetic Molecular Sieving of Hydrogen Isotopes in a Nanoporous Material, Phys. Rev. Lett., 105, 085901 (2010).
2. Bhatia, S.K., and D. Nicholson, Modeling Mixture Transport in Nanopores: Departure from Existing Paradigms, Phys. Rev. Lett., 100, 236103-1 - 236103-4 (2008).
3. Nguyen, T.X. and S.K. Bhatia, Kinetic Restriction of Simple Gases in Porous Carbons: Transition State Theory Study, Langmuir, 24, 146-154 (2008).
4. Bhatia, S.K. and A.L Myers, Optimal Conditions for Adsorptive Storage, Langmuir, 22; 1688-1700 (2006).
5. Jepps, O., S.K. Bhatia and D. Searles, Wall Mediated Transport in Confined Spaces: Exact Theory for Low Density, Phys. Rev. Lett., 91, 0126102-1 – 0126102-4 (2003).
