Congratulations, Belinda!

Dr. Belinda Slakman became the third PhD to graduate from the CoMoChEng group! She defended her thesis, “New Domains in Automatic Mechanism Generation”, on June 15th, 2017. Belinda is now working for Kyulux in Boston, MA.

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NSF grant resolving discrepancies in detailed kinetic models of combustion via automated TST calculations.

In 2016 Prof. West won a $259,990 grant titled “Resolving discrepancies in detailed kinetic models of combustion via automated transition state theory calculations.”

In order to develop cleaner and more efficient engines, and to make better use of both petroleum-derived and alternative fuels, engineers need a better understanding of combustion. Computer models that can accurately predict how different fuels burn in different conditions will help us develop new engines and new fuels. The goal of this research is predictive, detailed kinetic modeling of combustion, in which many thousands of relevant chemical reactions are calculated accurately. As a step towards this goal, the research will detect and correct major discrepancies in the reaction rates currently used in detailed kinetic models, and in so doing create a database of reaction transition states, as well as algorithms to predict them. The proposed work will use several novel techniques to identify and correct mistakes, uncertainties, and approximations currently hidden throughout detailed kinetic models of combustion. The project will remove the human bottle-neck in performing quantum mechanical calculations of chemical kinetics, enabling effective use of High Performance Computing for accurate calculation of reaction rate expressions in the future. This high-throughput calculation of reaction kinetics has been identified as a “basic research need for clean and efficient combustion of 21st century transportation fuels”, and by the Combustion Energy Frontier Research Center as an “important grand challenge”.

This three year project proposes to: (1) automate the performance of quantum mechanics (QM) based Transition State Theory (TST) calculations for combustion-relevant reactions in the open-source, kinetic model building software Reaction Mechanism Generator (RMG); (2) use a newly developed kinetic model importer tool to identify every elementary reaction published in recent combustion models; (3) use the automated methods from step one to calculate the rates of reactions from step two, creating a public database of reactions, rates from the literature, rates calculated by TST, QM calculation results, and transition state geometries; and (4) identify discrepancies between reaction rates in published models and those calculated via TST, and quantify the effect these discrepancies have on the model predictions. Additionally, we will develop a related suite of Python-based teaching materials suitable for undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum, to introduce combustion science to a wider audience. A PhD student and several undergraduate students will gain valuable research experience and training whilst working on this project.

Award abstract at NSF 

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Congratulations, Pierre!

Dr. Pierre Lennox Bhoorasingh became the second PhD graduate from the CoMoChEng group this week! He defended his thesis, “Automated Calculation of Reaction Kinetics Via Transition State Theory”, on June 8th, 2016. Pierre is now working for Pill Pack in Boston, MA.

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Congratulations, Fariba!

Dr. Fariba Seyedzadeh Khanshan officially became the first PhD graduate from the CoMoChEng group this week! She defended her thesis, “Automatic Generation of Detailed Kinetic Models for Complex Chemical Systems”, on January 29, 2016. Fariba is currently working as a post-doc at Shire in Lexington, MA.

Fariba and Professor Richard West at PhD Hooding Ceremony and Graduation on May 5, 2016

Fariba and Professor West at the PhD Hooding Ceremony and Graduation on May 5, 2016.

 

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Mechanism Importer at the US National Combustion Meeting

At the 9th US National Combustion Meeting in Cincinnati OH, progress on our mechanism importer project was presented. The presentation was titled “Identification, Correction, and Comparison of Detailed Kinetic Models” (Presentation date: May 20, 2015). Unfortunately we couldn’t attend the meeting in person, but Dr. C. Franklin Goldsmith was kind enough to give the presentation for us, and by all accounts did a wonderful job.

Links:

View on SlideShare.net.
Extended abstract.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 1403171. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation

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Undergraduate Research Opportunities

Programmers and chemists Wanted
On September 15, 2014, the CoMoChEng lab participated in the Northeastern University College of Engineering Undergraduate Research Fair.

We have many opportunities for undergraduate researchers at all levels. The flyer above has “Programmers” writ large, but most of our many successful researchers started with no programming experience, and many of our projects will not require you to touch the source code, so do not be discouraged if you can’t code!

Of course, if you can code, then what are you waiting for? Come and put your skills to good use, and improve them in the process!

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CoMoChEng at the Combustion Symposium

35th International Symposium on Combustion in San Francisco 2014

Richard, Pierre, and Fariba are in San Francisco this August for the 35th International Symposium on Combustion. The Computational Modeling in Chemical Engineering group is presenting four posters on Wednesday. If you’re at the conference, you should come and check them out! Our graphical abstracts are below. Contact us for the full posters.

RMG-Py: the Python version of Reaction Mechanism Generator RMG-Py: the Python version of Reaction Mechanism Generator

Group contributions for determining transition state geometries Group contributions for determining transition state geometries

Identification and Comparison of Detailed Chemical Mechanisms Identification and Comparison of Detailed Chemical Mechanisms

Improving Detailed Kinetic Models of Bio-oil Gasification via Rate Rule Calculations Improving Detailed Kinetic Models of Bio-oil Gasification via Rate Rule Calculations

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Flame Chemistry Workshop presentation

At the 2nd International Workshop on Flame Chemistry, Dr. West presented the group’s work on two projects related to automatic mechanism generation. The presentation was titled “Reaction Mechanism Generator: Toward High-Throughput Transition State Calculations, and Interpreting Existing Kinetic Models” (Presentation date: August 4, 2014)

Links:

View on SlideShare.net.

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NSF Grant to identify and resolve discrepancies in kinetic models

ChE Assistant Professor Richard West was awarded a $140K NSF Grant to “Identify and resolve discrepancies in kinetic models of hydrocarbon combustion“.

National Science Foundation Logo

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1403171.


Computational kinetic modeling of combustion chemistry has made significant progress in recent decades. Dozens of recent models, which describe tens of thousands of simultaneous reactions between thousands of intermediate species, are capable of explaining complicated combustion phenomena, allowing increasingly accurate engine simulations, and screening novel biofuels. However, these ever-proliferating detailed kinetic models are incompatible and inconsistent, are seldom compared directly, and often contain undetected mistakes.

The commonly used format to publish these models, devised in the 1970’s when input was limited by the width of 80-column punch-cards, forces model-builders to abbreviate species’ names, thereby losing their chemical identity, and to discard other metadata. The main challenge in comparing these models is in recognizing, for example, C3KET21 that the name “C3KET21” in one model represents 1-hydroperoxypropan-2-one, which another research group may have named “CH3COCH2O2H” in a different model.

This project develops tools to help identify the chemical species in a kinetic model, to facilitate comparison of models. The new tools will be built upon the open-source Reaction Mechanism Generator (RMG-Py) software, that we have been developing in a collaboration between Northeastern and the Massachussets Institute of Technology. A web-based user interface will make it easy for users to import models to the database, and provide instant reward for doing so (the ability to check the model, fill in gaps, and merge with other models). The proposed work will massively reduce the barriers to converting detailed kinetic models into a machine-readable format with clear and consistent species definitions. This will enable: (1) comparison between models, leading to more replicable science, (2) error identification, leading to higher quality data, (3) better rate estimates and a broader impact for mechanism generation software, and (4) wider use of process informatics tools. The unified database of all previous kinetic models will greatly assist progress in combustion modeling.

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Congratulations Belinda!

CoMoChEng graduate student Belinda Slakman successfully defended her PhD thesis proposal this spring. Belinda’s presentation, “Using Reaction Mechanism Generator (RMG) to study complex liquid-phase systems”, was held on April 11, 2014.  Well done Belinda! The CoMoChEng group now officially has three PhD candidates.

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