Professor Deresh Ramjugernath | |
---|---|
Nationality | South Africa |
Education | University of KwaZulu-Natal |
Awards | President’s Award, NRF President’s Award, NSTF Vice-Chancellor's Research Award, University of KwaZulu-Natal |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Thermodynamics |
Institutions | Stellenbosch University University of KwaZulu-Natal |
Deresh Ramjugernath FAAS is a South African professor of Engineering Technology & Applied Sciences. He was a Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and will assume the position Rector and Vice-Chancellor at Stellenbosch University on 1 April 2025. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Ramjugernath completed all of his studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He first obtained a degree in BSc in Chemical Engineering in 1993, followed by an MSc in 1995, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 2000. [4] [7]
Ramjugernath became a professor of chemical engineering at the age of 31 at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. In 2007, he became the Assistant Dean of Research and Postgraduate Studies at the Faculty of Engineering of the same University. He also served as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research and Pro Vice-Chancellor of Innovation, Commercialization, and Entrepreneurship before he was appointed as the deputy Vice-Chancellor of Learning and Teaching at the Stellenbosch University. [4] [8] [9] [10]
Ramjugernath research centered around Thermodynamics / Separation [2] including high-pressure vapor-liquid equilibria, [11] low-pressure vapor-liquid equilibria, [12] liquid-liquid equilibria, [13] phase equilibria with chemical reaction, [14] pyrolysis, high-temperature thermodynamics, [15] gas hydrate separation, [16] and high-pressure plasma reactors. [17]
Ramjugernath was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa, the African Academy of Sciences since 2015, [5] and a Fellow of the South African Academy of Engineering. [7]
He received the President’s Award from the National Research Foundation (NRF), and the National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF), South Africa. He was also the recipient of Vice-Chancellor's Research Award from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. [5] [1]
In thermodynamics, the enthalpy of vaporization, also known as the (latent) heat of vaporization or heat of evaporation, is the amount of energy (enthalpy) that must be added to a liquid substance to transform a quantity of that substance into a gas. The enthalpy of vaporization is a function of the pressure and temperature at which the transformation takes place.
Vapor pressure or equilibrium vapor pressure is the pressure exerted by a vapor in thermodynamic equilibrium with its condensed phases at a given temperature in a closed system. The equilibrium vapor pressure is an indication of a liquid's thermodynamic tendency to evaporate. It relates to the balance of particles escaping from the liquid in equilibrium with those in a coexisting vapor phase. A substance with a high vapor pressure at normal temperatures is often referred to as volatile. The pressure exhibited by vapor present above a liquid surface is known as vapor pressure. As the temperature of a liquid increases, the attractive interactions between liquid molecules become less significant in comparison to the entropy of those molecules in the gas phase, increasing the vapor pressure. Thus, liquids with strong intermolecular interactions are likely to have smaller vapor pressures, with the reverse true for weaker interactions.
In computational chemistry, molecular physics, and physical chemistry, the Lennard-Jones potential is an intermolecular pair potential. Out of all the intermolecular potentials, the Lennard-Jones potential is probably the one that has been the most extensively studied. It is considered an archetype model for simple yet realistic intermolecular interactions. The Lennard-Jones potential is often used as a building block in molecular models for more complex substances. Many studies of the idealized "Lennard-Jones substance" use the potential to understand the physical nature of matter.
Freezing-point depression is a drop in the maximum temperature at which a substance freezes, caused when a smaller amount of another, non-volatile substance is added. Examples include adding salt into water, alcohol in water, ethylene or propylene glycol in water, adding copper to molten silver, or the mixing of two solids such as impurities into a finely powdered drug.
In thermodynamics, an activity coefficient is a factor used to account for deviation of a mixture of chemical substances from ideal behaviour. In an ideal mixture, the microscopic interactions between each pair of chemical species are the same and, as a result, properties of the mixtures can be expressed directly in terms of simple concentrations or partial pressures of the substances present e.g. Raoult's law. Deviations from ideality are accommodated by modifying the concentration by an activity coefficient. Analogously, expressions involving gases can be adjusted for non-ideality by scaling partial pressures by a fugacity coefficient.
In thermodynamics, a critical point is the end point of a phase equilibrium curve. One example is the liquid–vapor critical point, the end point of the pressure–temperature curve that designates conditions under which a liquid and its vapor can coexist. At higher temperatures, the gas comes into a supercritical phase, and so cannot be liquefied by pressure alone. At the critical point, defined by a critical temperatureTc and a critical pressurepc, phase boundaries vanish. Other examples include the liquid–liquid critical points in mixtures, and the ferromagnet–paramagnet transition in the absence of an external magnetic field.
Jürgen Gmehling is a retired German professor of technical and industrial chemistry at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg.
The non-random two-liquid model is an activity coefficient model introduced by Renon and Prausnitz in 1968 that correlates the activity coefficients of a compound with its mole fractions in the liquid phase concerned. It is frequently applied in the field of chemical engineering to calculate phase equilibria. The concept of NRTL is based on the hypothesis of Wilson, who stated that the local concentration around a molecule in most mixtures is different from the bulk concentration. This difference is due to a difference between the interaction energy of the central molecule with the molecules of its own kind and that with the molecules of the other kind . The energy difference also introduces a non-randomness at the local molecular level. The NRTL model belongs to the so-called local-composition models. Other models of this type are the Wilson model, the UNIQUAC model, and the group contribution model UNIFAC. These local-composition models are not thermodynamically consistent for a one-fluid model for a real mixture due to the assumption that the local composition around molecule i is independent of the local composition around molecule j. This assumption is not true, as was shown by Flemr in 1976. However, they are consistent if a hypothetical two-liquid model is used. Models, which have consistency between bulk and the local molecular concentrations around different types of molecules are COSMO-RS, and COSMOSPACE.
In statistical thermodynamics, UNIQUAC is an activity coefficient model used in description of phase equilibria. The model is a so-called lattice model and has been derived from a first order approximation of interacting molecule surfaces. The model is, however, not fully thermodynamically consistent due to its two-liquid mixture approach. In this approach the local concentration around one central molecule is assumed to be independent from the local composition around another type of molecule.
A group-contribution method in chemistry is a technique to estimate and predict thermodynamic and other properties from molecular structures.
An osmotic coefficient is a quantity which characterises the deviation of a solvent from ideal behaviour, referenced to Raoult's law. It can be also applied to solutes. Its definition depends on the ways of expressing chemical composition of mixtures.
PSRK is an estimation method for the calculation of phase equilibria of mixtures of chemical components. The original goal for the development of this method was to enable the estimation of properties of mixtures containing supercritical components. This class of substances cannot be predicted with established models, for example UNIFAC.
MOSCED is a thermodynamic model for the estimation of limiting activity coefficients. From a historical point of view MOSCED can be regarded as an improved modification of the Hansen method and the Hildebrand solubility model by adding higher interaction term such as polarity, induction and separation of hydrogen bonding terms. This allows the prediction of polar and associative compounds, which most solubility parameter models have been found to do poorly. In addition to making quantitative prediction, MOSCED can be used to understand fundamental molecular level interaction for intuitive solvent selection and formulation.
VTPR is an estimation method for the calculation of phase equilibria of mixtures of chemical components. The original goal for the development of this method was to enable the estimation of properties of mixtures which contain supercritical components. These class of substances couldn't be predicted with established models like UNIFAC.
John Michael Prausnitz is an emeritus professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Mie potential is an interaction potential describing the interactions between particles on the atomic level. It is mostly used for describing intermolecular interactions, but at times also for modeling intramolecular interaction, i.e. bonds.
George Jackson,, , is a British professor of chemical physics in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. He is noted for developing molecular models that describe the thermodynamic properties of complex fluids; as one of the developers of statistical associating fluid theory (SAFT); and for his work in molecular systems engineering. His theoretical work has found a wide range of practical applications in industries such as gas extraction and emerging fields like carbon capture and storage.
Statistical associating fluid theory (SAFT) is a chemical theory, based on perturbation theory, that uses statistical thermodynamics to explain how complex fluids and fluid mixtures form associations through hydrogen bonds. Widely used in industry and academia, it has become a standard approach for describing complex mixtures. Since it was first proposed in 1990, SAFT has been used in a large number of molecular-based equation of state models for describing the Helmholtz energy contribution due to association.
Thermodynamic modelling is a set of different strategies that are used by engineers and scientists to develop models capable of evaluating different thermodynamic properties of a system. At each thermodynamic equilibrium state of a system, the thermodynamic properties of the system are specified. Generally, thermodynamic models are mathematical relations that relate different state properties to each other in order to eliminate the need of measuring all the properties of the system in different states.