Two chemical engineering Ph.D. students, Syed Ahsan Imam and Dhagash Mehul Pandit, have been awarded first place in the fourth annual Chevron Energy Innovation Competition for their proposal of a novel method for ethylene production.
“This is arguably the most valuable chemical in the world, mainly to produce plastic-based products, and it is huge for the economy,” said Imam. “We started working towards producing this particular chemical through alternative means… we designed the experiments accordingly to make sure that this has the best possible optimal yield, and we went further to design the proper reactor system which can optimize the overall production efficiency by means of autothermal operation.”
“The existing process that ethylene is being produced with requires a lot of energy,” added Pandit. “If ours were to replace that process, we could get nearly similar output without significant energy addition. In simple terms, you can say that heat utilization is efficiently managed to carry out the process.”
Theirs was one of fifteen teams that underwent a rigorous evaluation process, culminating in a seven-minute pitch to angel investors, venture capitalists, technology entrepreneurs and others. Each finalist team received a $2,000 award, and Imam and Pandit received an additional $25,000 as the top prize.
Imam describes his reaction to their success as being “flabbergasted.”
“All of the other teams were really competent and pitched their work in a very effective manner, but we were also very confident because we knew we had delivered a strong pitch to the best of our ability,” he said. “It was a moment of serendipity, joy and confidence all together.”
Theirs was the only team with a “purely technical background;” each of the other teams had some additional experience in business and finance.
“In the end, I think this is the result of our efforts and rigorous work that we have carried out in the lab and this would not have been achieved without the support of our advisors, Dr. Vemuri Balakotaiah and Dr. Praveen Bollini, who played altogether an instrumental role,” Imam and Pandit said.
They expressed gratitude to Chevron for this opportunity along with managing director of UH’s Division of Energy and Innovation, Suryanarayanan Radhakrishnan, as well as The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) Houston for their support of this project and their success.
“Dr. Radha has played an integral role in this journey,” Imam said. “He assisted us with tailoring our pitch and presentation, as did Amir Eskafyan from TIE Houston, to deliver it effectively and efficiently within the [competition’s] 7-minute time restriction.”
In collaboration with UH Energy and other stakeholders, their “path to commercialization is already underway.”
“We hope to lead this towards commercialization in the future. We have proof of concept on a laboratory scale, but in order to catch the attention of the biggest stakeholders, like industry partners, we look forward to demonstrating on a bigger scale,” said Imam.