In this seminar, I am going to present some recent advances in the development of a new equation of state for non-spherical particles. The idea is to overcome the issue with a non-integer number of spherical segments in the current versions of SAFT equations of state by means of Wertheim first-order perturbation theory. By replacing the chains of molecules by a reference term based on a non-spherical particle, we have been able to obtain good results for small molecules.
Prof. Luís Fernando Mercier Franco,
University of Campinas, Brazil
In the second part of the seminar, I intend to show an extension of the first part applied to Monte Carlo simulations of clover-like particles made of four cylinders and the intricacies of its phase diagram, as well as possible applications of non-spherical particles in other industrial contexts. By the end of the seminar, I am going to present an overview of the research we have been doing in other areas, as well as some innovations we carried out in our chemical engineering curriculum at the University of Campinas.
Prof. Luís Fernando Mercier Franco is Associate Professor at School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Campinas, Brazil. He obtained his PhD in chemical engineering at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, under the supervision of Prof. Pedro de Alcântara Pessôa Filho, developing part of the thesis at the University of Notre Dame, as a Visiting Researcher at the group of Prof. Edward Maginn. In 2015, he received the Helmut Knapp Award at the ESAT held in Athens, Greece. From 2016 to 2017, he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Texas A&M University at Qatar under the supervision of Prof. Ioannis Economou. In 2017, he was offered a faculty position at the University of Campinas. In 2023, Prof. Franco received the Fulbright Junior Professor Award to spend 4 months in the Reservoir Engineering Research Institute, under the direction of Prof. Abbas Firoozabadi, in Palo Alto, USA. More recently, Prof. Franco received the prestigious PPEPPD Young Research Award. His research is devoted to the application of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, molecular simulations, and molecular-based equations of state to a variety of industrial problems, with special attention to carbon capture and sequestration.