Prof. Isam Janajreh is Professor and the associate chair in the Mechanical Engineering department. He received his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in Eng. Science and Mech. Specialized in fluid-dynamics, thermochemical-conversion, and solid/fluid interactions. He joined VT as visiting professor at ESM & Math Dept. (1998), and then Michelin US R&D and Michelin France heading European Project ’99-04. He joined Parametric Solutions Inc. in Florida (‘05-‘07) heading numerous US governments projects with GE/Pratt/Rolls. He joined Masdar in 2007 as visiting assistant MIT professor, associate (2010), and currently is full professor. His research focus on reactive flow, conjugate heat and solid fluid interaction applied in various engineering application. Including gasification and reforming, desalination, and energy and sustainability. He established the Waste to Energy Laboratory at Masdar/KU that drew funds from Tadweer, Beeah, ADNOC, Ducab, NIST, Sonkeyenergy, Masdar Corp. and several internal MI grants and numerous others. He authored over 140 refereed publications and graduated 27 MS and Ph.D students. Isam is a regular reviewer of EC&M, Appl. Pyrolysis, Ren. Energy, Fuel, Appl. energy, member of ASME, TS&T, Rubber Division, ASCE, and several scientific committees. Isam is also Editor in chief, associate editor, and editor for Int. J. of Enhanced Research in Science, Tech. & Eng., IJTEE, J. of Energy and Power Eng. Solid, J. of Solid Waste Tech. and Management.
Gasification of Different Waste Streams: Including MSW, Plastics, tire Shreds, Spent pot lining, Shale Oil: This project involves conducting TGA analysis to capture the thermal decomposition of the feedstock and accordingly inferring their proximate analysis, then evaluates their main event devolatalization and combustion kinetics that used in high fidelity reactive flow modeling. In parallel low fidelity systematic analysis is carried out as a benchmark to the best conversion metrics. Should you like analytical analysis such as TGA, ICP, GC/MS and the combustion of solid waste using Drop Tube Reactor and you enjoy multi-physics flow simulation using Fluent this is a nice project to learn and advance your knowledge.
Desalination via membrane distillation known as Direct Contact Membrane Distillation. This project involves experimental setup and analyses and high fidelity CFD simulation of conjugated flow. You will have a chance to build your desalination unit using acrylic blocks and using (in-house electro-spun or commercial) super-hydrophilic thin membranes that separate two open flow chambers, one represents a fresh and another represents the brine. In this research numerous parameters as the role of membrane porously, thickness, conductivity, flow conditions (Re, temperature, turbulence intensity) have been investigated. You can push this research forward by start looking at what is happening to the brine diffusion adjacent to the membrane to improve the process efficiency in increasing the temperature and reducing the concentration polarization beyond what has been reported.
Freeze desalination which is a new trend in desalination due to the very low energy of fusion which is only 1/7th of the latent heat which consumed during thermal processes. You can use your 1st principle of cooling to estimate the time and energy utilization in the brine freezing process. Most importantly you will notice brine diffusion/migration occurs during freezing pushing the highly concentrated bine forward and leaving the lower salinity frozen crystal behind. You can guess that successive freezing and melting is the way forward. The project involve experimental setup at the macro and micro level: Using freeze dryer apparatus per the setup below and simple and micro-level using thermos electric Peltier setup. The goal is to gain more fundamental of the freezing as quenching will lead to homogenized freezing and trapping the salts while controlled directional freezing enables one to manipulate the diffusion of the brine leading to a lower salinity crystallization and hence taking advantage of low heat of fusion for energy saving. Your role is to design the perfect crystallizer, carry out two phase flow simulation that involves solid phase transition following the phase transition of the brine, and finally you may able to carry and design the entire process systematically emphasizing its feasibility.
Thermo-acoustic is another active project that demonstrates the conversion of the waste thermal energy or concentrated solar energy into acoustic energy using and developing an acoustic engine, then use this source of acoustic energy as a prime mover to drive a heat pomp. A few papers have been published focusing on the role of the fluid medium, thermal energy intensity, and the geometry of the resonator. There are plenty of work to design the generator and the development of high fidelity conjugated heat transfer and optimizing the viscous penetration and thermal dissipation lengths. The project involved Design, Build and Test at every level and as system integration at high Carnot efficiency.
Flow over breathing/slotted/perforating bodies and variable pitching aero foil and wind energy. Over one set of geometries one is keen in reducing the drag, and in another the goal is to increase the lift. It all falls towards manipulating the boundary layer. The turbosail, optimizing suction & blowing over bluff bodies, flow over rotating bodies (single rotating cylinder, rotating turbine rotors, or flow over variable pitching turbine blades all belongs to this category.
Flow Induced Vibration and fluid solid interaction: This is a funded CIRA 2020 project which enabled us to investigate the flow induced vibration on tube bundle heat exchangers. This conducted both experimentally and using multiple high fidelity CFD modeling covering single and tandem oscillating cylinders across the flow. Flow modal decomposition and passive and active flow control as well as oscillatory flow energy harvesting.
