Mr Ben Petrovic
PhD Student

Summary

I am a current doctoral researcher at the Department of Chemical Engineering of Brunel University London. I have been at Brunel since 2016 when I began my Mechanical Engineering bachelor's. Since graduating I have been working in the area of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). I am an Early Career Research (ECR) member of the UK's Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre (UKCCSRC) and hold an Associate Membership with the Institution of Chemical Engineers (AMIChemE).

In the final year of my Mechanical Engineering degree at Brunel University I studied the optimisation of post-combustion CO2 capture from a combined-cycle gas turbine power plant via Taguchi design of experiment. The project involved the modelling, simulation and optimisation of an amine-based absorption capture unit to process the flue gas of a 600 MW NGCC power plant. This project was published in the peer-reviewed journal Processes 2019, 7(6): https://doi.org/10.3390/pr7060364

Upon graduation I was granted an EPSRC DTP PhD Studentship. My PhD (October 2019-present) involves the utilisation of biomass combustion ash in the removal of CO2 from biomass combustion plants. Negative emission technologies such as Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) are integral to the UK government's targets to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. With strong links to the country's largest power station Drax, who have recently declared the commercial closure of their last 2 remaining coal-fired boilers by 2021, this project intends to reveal the feasibility of a niche, in-situ process based on novel and cost-effective adsorbents for CO2 capture; reinforcing the UK's 2019 climate change agenda via accelerating the development and deployment of BECCS. 

I've recently returned from a 12-month secondment with SSE Thermal working as an Academic Engineer directly under the Lead Design Engineer for the Keadby 3 CCGT & CCS JV Project with Equinor in the North-east of England. This role supported the second phase of FEED for the project which comprised a consortium of Aker Solutions (and Aker Carbon Capture), Siemens Energy, Altrad Babcock. Keadby 3 sits within the East Coast Cluster in the Humber region and would remove 1.5 Mt CO2 annually. The power island will incorporate a H-class GT and a ST, with steam provided to the amine-based carbon capture plant designed and licenced by Aker Carbon Capture.