Asraf Ali

SABIC

Biography:

Asraf Ali received his Ph.D. (Chemistry) from Institute of Chemical Technology (Formerly UDCT), Mumbai University. His Ph.D. work titled “Studies on Novel Methods of Organic Synthesis” involved enhancing the rate of reactions, by utilising microwave. He has about 12 years of Industrial experience working in the field of separation sciences. He has worked for Johnson&Johnson, GE and SABIC. He is an expert in the area of Gas Chromatography and Gas chromatography related areas such as GCMS’s, Headspace GCMS, Pyrolysis GCMS and TDS-GCMS. He has been involved in several thermoplastics process and product development programs. He has also worked very closely for development of polycarbonates, polyphenylene oxides, polyether imide and polydimethyl siloxanes. He also has been actively involved in the development of online reactors and process GC for petrochemical research.

Short description about presentation:

The concept of on-line process Gas chromatograph (GC) is very common for carrying online analysis in the petroleum and petrochemical industry. In on-line process GC, the basic technique is same as used in laboratory, but the process GC can be configured with multiport valves, dean switches with single or multi columns and detector that make them versatile. Various on-line GC systems with gas sampling valves are well-known and established for automation of gas chromatographic analysis. However, liquid sampling under high pressure is un-common, mainly due to sampling difficulties at the required GC injection pressure. Additionally, separation and representative analysis of highly volatile liquefied hydrocarbons and oxygenates with high accuracy and precision can be major challenge to the analytical chemist. In this article, we report automated multicolumn GC technique, which we have established for the on-line monitoring of liquefied hydrocarbons and oxygenates for the newly established continuous MTBE/ETBE synthesis reactor system. We will also discuss the use of various loop system and combinations of different loop sizes for catalytic conversion of Carbon dioxide and catalytic dehydrogenation of propane.

DOE(Design of Experiment) is a very useful six sigma tool to optimize the reaction parameters and obtain optimum conditions. The authors would also discuss the use of DOE in optimizing parameters to study the conversion of nitrobenzene to aniline, as a model reaction on basic catalyst system, using an in-house designed micro-reactor coupled to online GC-MS.