Two OSU engineering professors receive NSF EAGER award to study ways to decarbonize heavy industries

Two OSU engineering professors receive NSF EAGER award to study ways to decarbonize heavy industries

Friday, July 26, 2024

Media Contact: Desa James | Communications Coordinator | 405-744-2669 | [email protected]

Dr. Paritosh Ramanan, assistant professor of industrial engineering and management, and Dr. Zheyu Jiang, assistant professor of chemical engineering, were recently awarded the National Science Foundation EAGER award.

This two-year grant from the National Science Foundation serves as part of the NSF-wide Clean Energy Technology initiative to develop potentially transformative, convergent, fundamental solutions in clean energy technologies. The EAGER funding mechanism supports exploratory work in its preliminary stages on untested, but potentially transformative, research ideas or approaches.

In this newly funded project, titled "EAGER: CET: Decentralized Algorithms for Integrating Decarbonized Chemical Process Heating with Renewable-driven, Electric Power Systems," Ramanan and Jiang were awarded $299,050 to study systematic ways to more safely and effectively integrate renewable-driven electric power systems with the chemical and refining industries.

The U.S. manufacturing sector accounts for 20% of the country's primary energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions. In particular, chemical and refining industries are responsible for nearly half of the manufacturing sector's primary energy consumption and GHG emissions, most of which are used exclusively for process heating. As the U.S. energy landscape continues to transition toward clean, renewable electricity, chemical process heating is also actively seeking electrification.

To support this ongoing trend, electrification of chemical process heating needs to be integrated with clean energy systems and accompanied by decarbonization of the electric grid. This requires a robust, real-time framework to facilitate information sharing between power system stakeholders and chemical plants.

"As industrial decarbonization efforts accelerate, it becomes increasingly important to enable information sharing and collaborative decision-making among stakeholders while keeping sensitive local data private. I am thrilled to collaborate with Dr. Jiang on research that addresses these privacy and computational challenges, particularly in integrating the operations of diverse stakeholders such as chemical plants and renewable-driven power systems," Ramanan said.

In this project, Ramanan and Jiang will jointly develop new computational methodologies to enable secure, real-time information sharing among different stakeholders by ensuring the privacy of data, so that chemical plants and power systems can better coordinate their operations and maintenance to achieve holistic decarbonization across all stakeholders.

"I am excited to work with Dr. Ramanan to tackle this critical issue by bringing together new, cross-cutting expertise and interdisciplinary perspectives from diverse fields, including chemical engineering, power systems, computational science and machine learning," Jiang said.

Story By: Natalie Henderson | Prospective Student Services Coordinator | [email protected]