Derek W. Griffin
Office Location: ENGR II rm. 3228
Phone: 1-805-893-3120
Fax: 1-805-893-4731
e-mail: dgriffin@engineering.ucsb.edu
Second Year Graduate Student- Chemical
Engineering- 2003…
Advisors: Michael F. Doherty &
Duncan A. Mellichamp
Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering 2003
Commonwealth College Scholar
University of Massachusetts Amherst – 1999-2003
University of California- Santa Barbara
Department of Chemical Engineering
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5080
Current Research
My research currently involves deriving plant wide operation heuristics for various isothermal chemistries characterized by reversible reactions. The goal is to operate a chemical plant with the lowest operating costs by considering reactor volume and recycle flows as variables to optimize. Analytical expressions for product production rates and operating costs are derived from kinetic models describing the individual reactions. These expressions are non-dimensionalized and the cost function minimized to find the optimal operating regime. This work will be continued to include non-isothermal effects.
Undergraduate Research
Griffin, D.; Payer, K.; Tompsett, G.; Conner, W. C.; "Sorption Hysteresis in Mesoporous Molecular Sieves: Insight from Scanning Isotherms" Presented at the 2003 AICHE Annual Conference, paper 329f. San Francisco, CA.