Background
Education
Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India, B. Chem. Engg. (2012)
Awards
Purdue Research Foundation Fellowship (2013)
UGC Fellowship for Undergraduate Research (2010)
About Me
I have been a graduate student at Purdue since Fall 2012. I was born and brought up in Mumbai, India and received my BS from the Institute of Chemical Technology. During my undergrad, I worked on synthesis of room temperature ionic liquids and their applications in separation of aromatic from aliphatic compounds with Prof. Ashwin Patwardhan and Prof. Anand Patwardhan.
Project Description
Ab-Initio computational chemistry methods such as Density Functional Theory (DFT) are used to further understand catalytic reactions on metal/metal oxide surfaces. Through these techniques, it is possible to predict rates of chemical reactions and to relate them to experimental findings.
1. Partial oxidation of hydrocarbons involves the selective scission of C-H bonds. These processes are of particular significance because they produce petrochemicals and liquid fuels. We study these reactions with the intention of analyzing mechanisms and drawing macro-scale conclusions from calculations at the atomistic level.
2. The Water Gas Shift (WGS) reaction is used extensively in the industry for ammonia, hydrogen, and methanol production. More recently, it has seen applications in fuel cells with the aim of removing CO contamination in feed streams. Noble metals dispersed on metal oxide supports are one class of heterogeneous catalyst used for WGS. These catalysts are promising because they not only show greater activity but are also resistant to CO poisoning. We work towards understanding the role played by the metal – oxide interface in WGS kinetics using DFT.
Publications
- Vibhuti A Dukhande, Tej Choksi, Sanket U. Sabnis, Ashwin W. Patwardhan and Anand V. Patwardhan, Separation of toluene from n-heptane using monocationic and dicationic ionic liquids, Fluid Phase Equilibria 342 (2013) 75 – 81.